


Talk To Me Of Lightning

by boasamishipper



Series: Beyond [3]
Category: Top Gun (1986)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Canonical Character Death, Communication Issues, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Male Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Nightmares, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:54:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24581893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boasamishipper/pseuds/boasamishipper
Summary: Maverick dreamt of Goose, most nights. On the ground, still alive; in the air, dying; in the ocean, already dead, pulling Maverick with him as they sank beneath the waves. The pain followed him into his waking hours, like a knife lodged permanently in his chest, but he shoved it down, smiled around it, put on a show for everyone. Even Ice. And even though Maverick ached to tell Ice the truth, to tell him about the nightmares, his grief, everything, he couldn’t make himself do it. He wasn’t brave enough. His time with Charlie had taught him what would happen if he did. / Sequel to Lead Me On (To The Other Side).
Relationships: Nick "Goose" Bradshaw & Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Past Bill "Cougar" Cortell/Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Past Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell & Mike "Viper" Metcalf, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell
Series: Beyond [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632508
Comments: 14
Kudos: 55





	Talk To Me Of Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> _“Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them."_  
>  —Sue Grafton, _M is for Malice_

The world was getting smaller, constricting on him, on them both. Terror rose in his throat like bile, choking the breath out of him as he was pulled down, down, down into a downward spiral, hurtling like a meteor toward the sea. Alarms shrieked around him, and he gulped down air that was acrid with the stench of burning metal, his stomach plummeting, tears searing his eyes. He tried to grab the ejection handle, but it was miles away, their saving grace out of reach like a distant star while gravity bent him ruthlessly forward onto the now useless controls.

_“Goose! Goose, you have to punch us out — Goose, I can’t reach the ejection handle!”_

_“I’m trying! I’m—”_

The canopy popped off and sent him flying. The impact punched the air out of his lungs, preventing him from screaming, but he could still feel the wind whipping around him as he floated down, down, down, his chest aching from lack of breath, his heart pounding, and _no no please no please god no not him, not him—_

Goose’s body was heavy in his arms, the waves lapping at him and intermingling with the salty tears streaming down his face. He treaded water desperately, unwilling to let go of Goose, unable to take his eyes off his best friend’s face, his eyes fixed on a point that only he could see. He could feel the water tangling the fabric of the parachute strapped to his back, tugging him down despite his best effort to keep afloat, and his scream was stifled by the water filling his mouth as Goose was pulled away from him, and he sank below the waves.

* * *

Maverick jolted upright.

Sweat trickled down his forehead, his heart pounding so loud and heavy he could feel it beating high in his throat. His breaths came shallow and too fast but slowly eased and lengthened as the world came back into focus, its edges solidifying. He wasn’t in the sky. He wasn’t falling. He wasn’t drowning. He wasn’t holding onto anything but the covers. He was safe. He was alive.

And Goose was dead.

His vision blurred, and he angrily swiped the tears aside with the back of his hand. This was pathetic. _He_ was pathetic. Dreaming of Goose’s death in the days and weeks after the accident was one thing, but it had been almost seven months since then and every nightmare still felt like the first time. He shouldn’t be reacting like this anymore. He needed to get it together. He needed to move on.

“Mav?” Beside him, Ice stirred, blinking blearily at him. _Shit._ Maverick hurriedly wiped the rest of the tears away. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Maverick plastered on a reassuring smile that he definitely didn’t feel. His voice felt too loud in the quiet darkness of the bedroom. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

Ice just frowned; he propped himself up on one elbow, scrubbing his free hand down his face. “Bad dream?”

Unbidden, Maverick thought about the acrid stench of burning aluminum, the coolness of the waves lapping at him, the familiar weight of Goose in his arms and the tangled parachute tugging them both below the surface. Goose’s voice, calling to him; the only way he would ever hear Goose’s voice again, now. His throat went tight; he turned away so Ice couldn’t see any of that in his face. Did it even count as a nightmare if it was a memory he couldn’t stop reliving? 

Ice exhaled. When Maverick looked at him again, there wasn’t any pity in his eyes, just sympathy, which made Maverick feel vaguely uncomfortable. He could deal with irritation and exasperation, like Charlie wouldn’t have hesitated to show had she been there. Sympathy, though. He had no fucking clue how to deal with that. “Want to talk about it?”

“No,” Maverick said quickly, trying for another smile. “I’m fine, Ice. Seriously. No big deal.”

Ice looked a little relieved. The vague, uncomfortable feeling in the pit of Maverick’s stomach grew more pronounced, and Maverick told it to shut up. “What time is it?”

“Uh…” Maverick squinted at the clock on the nightstand. “Almost three.”

Ice opened his arms slightly, and Maverick hesitated for the barest of seconds before he slid back down under the covers. Ice wrapped his arms around Maverick, holding him close, and Maverick breathed him in: his familiar warmth, his presence, the faint scent of his aftershave. Normally Ice slept like the dead, and Maverick never wanted to wake him up after these things happened, so he always ended up sleeping alone and out of Ice’s reach for the rest of the night.

Goose would have probably called him an idiot for that. If he were here, he’d tell Maverick that there was nothing wrong with some good old-fashioned cuddling every once in a while, probably with a smirk and some waggling eyebrows thrown into the mix. But Goose wasn’t here anymore, and that was the whole point. Goose was dead. Maverick didn’t deserve shit.

Still, Ice was holding him now, and if he moved away, Ice would ask why, and one question would lead to another that he didn’t want to answer, and, well. He really, really didn’t want to move away. So Maverick closed his eyes and decided to savor the feeling as long as he could. It couldn’t happen again, and it wouldn’t, not if Ice knew the truth. Tonight was a fluke. He’d keep it to himself from now on.

Ice’s voice was barely louder than a breath. “Think you can go back to sleep now?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

Ice kissed Maverick’s hairline, and Maverick let himself relax completely into his embrace, nuzzling Ice’s neck, nosing at the love bite he’d left a few hours before. Ice’s hand moved up and down Maverick’s side, stroking rhythmically. “Go back to sleep, Mav,” he murmured. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

“Don’t,” Maverick wanted to whisper back, but he was asleep before he could form the words.

* * *

Morning dawned a few hours later, and with it came the start of the new session: Maverick’s fifth at TOPGUN, not counting his own. By now he was used to how everything worked, and how to deal with the usual group of pilots who thought they were hot shit. The first day was always the easiest: Jester would gather the new pilots together and brief them about the history of the program, Viper would make his usual speech about how they were the top one percent of all naval aviators — the tip of the spear, edge of the knife, crack of the ass, whatever — and then he and Ice and the other instructors would go over the material they’d be teaching, and then they’d be done for the day. And then tomorrow, they’d fly.

Maverick had packed his service khakis in his overnight bag, and he woke Ice with his mouth, both of them happy to make the most of their extra time together. After, when Ice went to take a shower, Maverick dozed off to the faint sound of Marvin Gaye, only to be rudely awakened ten minutes later when a pillow landed on his face. “What the hell, Kazansky?”

“Shower’s available now,” Ice said, grinning even when Maverick flipped him the bird. He was in his underwear, his hair damp and spiked up in the front, though the tips flattened slightly when he pulled a white undershirt over his head. Maverick’s mouth went dry. “You’d better go before it’s too late.”

“There’d better be coffee when I get out.”

“We’ll see,” said Ice, which Maverick knew meant there would be. “Get a move on, Mitchell.”

“Fuck off,” Maverick said, but he did as he was told. He grabbed Ice’s shirt from the edge of the bed and pulled it on, the hem brushing against the top of his boxers as he stood up. Luckily, he didn’t have to go too far since Ice’s bedroom had an en suite bathroom, but he’d barely crossed the room when he noticed Ice putting on his uniform in front of the dresser. His movements were controlled and precise as he looped the belt through his pants, made sure the buttons on his shirt were done up properly, adjusted his collar so the hickey Maverick had left was no longer visible.

Ice didn’t turn around, but Maverick could see in the mirror above the dresser that his eyebrows were arched. “You’re staring, Maverick.”

“I always stare at you when you get ready for work. You never noticed?”

“When I’m getting ready for work, I’m usually concentrating on getting ready for work. That might be why I always get dressed faster than you.”

Maverick laughed. “Fair enough.”

“You get lots of other chances to stare at me.”

“Yeah, but not like this,” Maverick said. “You always look so fucking good when you get all intent and focused on what you’re doing.”

Ice snorted, obviously thinking he was kidding. “Wait until you see me play Monopoly.”

“I’m serious.” Ice cast a skeptical look over his shoulder, and Maverick added slyly, “Plus I’ve got a great view from here.”

That made him laugh. “I can think of a better one.”

“What are you talking — _oh,_ okay. Right. That’s what you meant.”

“Mmhmm,” Ice said. He’d crossed the room while Maverick had been talking, and now Ice was looming over him, crowding him up against the wall. Ice smirked at him, and Maverick felt his face grow hot. “Like the view any more up close?”

“Maybe a little,” Maverick said, and before he could think of something more clever to say, Ice took Maverick’s face in his hands and kissed him, slow and thorough. Maverick started, surprised for a split second — he still wasn’t used to this, even three and a half months later — but he grabbed Ice by the hips and pulled him even closer, enjoying the feeling of being boxed in like this, and Ice’s sharp little intake of breath against his mouth when Maverick bit at his bottom lip and rocked up against him.

And because Ice was never one to let Maverick one-up him and get away with it, he kissed Maverick harder and let his hands roam down Maverick’s back to his buttocks, squeezing, exploring in a way that held promise. Promise that Maverick _definitely_ wanted to make good on, and would have if Ice didn’t decide to pull away just then.

“If I were you, Mitchell,” Ice said with another slow smirk, “I’d make that shower a cold one.”

 _“Ice,”_ Maverick protested, only a little out of breath. “Come on, man.”

“Make it quick, too. You don’t want to be late.”

“Asshole,” Maverick muttered, reluctantly letting go of him. Ice blew him a kiss on his way out of the bedroom, and Maverick gave him the finger again, grinning despite himself. He’d get Ice back later. Ice could count on that.

* * *

They drove to work separately, and by the time Maverick got there, Ice was already in the lounge, twirling a pen over his fingers as he listened to whatever the other instructors were talking about. Maverick took the available seat next to Ice; Ice didn’t break eye contact with the others, but he hooked his ankle around Maverick’s under the table, a silent greeting that sent pleasant shivers down Maverick’s spine.

“These new kids are going to turn my fucking hair gray,” one of the instructors — Gilligan, maybe? He still didn’t have half of their names down — was saying. Since he was already balding, Maverick guessed it was a figure of speech. “I had to go by the main room on the way here and from the looks of it, every single one of them thinks that their shit smells sweeter than most.”

“Fucking fantastic,” another one said, rolling his eyes. Maverick knew his name, at least: Eric Sullivan, callsign Sunshine, for his eternal optimism. “You hear we’ve got a lady pilot this session?”

“No shit,” Ice said, looking interested. “What’s her story?”

“Why?” Sunshine asked. “You thinking about making a move on her, Iceman?”

Ice flashed Sunshine a grin, all shining teeth and _I’m a fucking naval aviator_ arrogance. “Well, out of all of us, I think I’ve got the best chance,” he said lightly, gesturing at the other instructors around the table — all of whom were either married, going gray, or ugly as shit. “Might as well know what she’s like before I decide to go for her.”

“Speak for yourself, Kazansky, I think I’ve got a pretty good chance,” Maverick said with a cocky grin of his own, and Ice just shook his head, smiling to himself. Gilligan rolled his eyes, but Maverick didn’t care. “So anyway, what’s her story?”

“Her callsign’s Jinx,” Sunshine said. “And her RIO’s Taz, I think. Tag or Taz or something like that.”

“Where’d she used to be stationed?”

“Do I look like I wrote her autobiography, Mitchell?” Sunshine’s retort made Maverick flush, embarrassed, and Gilligan and the others snickered. “I don’t fucking know. Guess we’ll find out when we get her file.” He laced his fingers together. “They shouldn’t be letting women fly, anyway. They’ll go up in the air when they’re PMSing and _boom,_ everything’s a fucking catastrophe.”

Ice’s jaw tightened. Maverick had met Ice’s sister Taylor, an Air Force pilot, over the holidays, but even though he’d never actually seen her fly, Maverick was willing to bet his pension that she was a better pilot than Sunshine could ever be. “I don’t know about that, Sunshine,” Maverick said, as brightly as he could manage, and reached over to clap Sunshine on the shoulder. “I mean, they let you fly, don’t they?”

Sunshine went puce, but any comeback he might have made was cut off by Viper entering the lounge, Jester on his heels. While Viper was talking — telling them all to head into the main room for Jester’s presentation, then to their classrooms, and then to Viper’s office after classes let out to meet the new TAGREP, since their old one was on medical leave for the next six weeks — Ice casually brushed his foot against Maverick’s again. Briefly, so briefly. An accident. But Maverick knew better.

He and Ice stood together in the back of the room with Sunshine, Gilligan, and the other instructors while Jester and Viper spoke to the new kids. Maverick spotted Jinx right away: she was slight and dark-haired, with sharp eyes and a sharp face, and she and her RIO looked straight ahead at Jester the whole time, even when some of the pilots around her were glaring at her and whispering.

When Maverick got the kids together to tell them about the evasive maneuvers they’d be learning during the session, Jinx sat in the middle row, two seats to the left of the door. She didn’t call attention to herself, not exactly, but everyone’s eyes were on her all the same. She had this aura of cold determination around her, like someone who dealt comfortably in death threats, and her smile was all teeth. In a way, she kind of reminded him of Ice. At least before Maverick got to know him.

What really got to him, though, was the two guys who sat right in front of Jinx and Taz. Axis was the pilot, formerly of the USS _Lincoln,_ with an elfish face and a gleam in his eyes as he looked around the room, like he was waiting for the chance to pick someone’s pockets. And his RIO, Hawkeye, was tall, blond, and Texan, with an infectious laugh and a silver cross on a chain around his neck. Just the sight of Hawk laughing with Ax on the way out of the classroom made Maverick feel like someone had flicked at a knife handle stuck in his chest.

He’d get used to it. Not like he really had a choice otherwise.

Ice was waiting for him in his office, leaning back in Maverick’s chair. Funny how surprised he’d been the first time he saw Ice in his office like this, and now it was just a regular part of his life. Maverick closed the door behind him, and, after making sure the blinds were down all the way, crossed the room to sit at the edge of his desk, right next to Ice. “Get your fucking feet off my desk,” he told Ice, who grinned and crossed his ankles. “So what do you think of the kids?”

Ice brought a paper cup of water to his mouth, shrugging one shoulder. “No worse than usual,” he said. “Guess we’ll have to see what they’re like in the air.”

“Did Johnson start the betting pool yet?”

“Yeah,” Ice said. His lip curled. “Heard Sunshine put twenty on anybody but Jinx and Taz taking it.”

“Fuck, I — seriously? Already?”

“Yeah, already. And Gilligan says he’s going to put twenty on Ax and Hawk. Claimed that since they’re Annapolis grads, they’ve got the best chance of being on the plaque.”

The knife in his chest twinged, and he tried to grin around it. _Ah, you're killing me, you kill me!_ _No, no, there’s_ two _Os in Goose, boys._ “I bet that’s what they said during our session too. About you and Slider, I mean.”

“You still gave us a run for our money.”

“Yeah,” Maverick said quietly. The memories of their session on top of his unwarranted thoughts about Ax and Hawk were too much to handle at the same time, so he leaned in to kiss Ice hard, to try and loosen the grip of the cold hand that had suddenly wrapped around his heart. Only he forgot that Ice was still holding that cup, and the next thing he knew Ice had swore and moved the chair back, a wet splotch spreading across his abdomen. “Shit.”

“Shit,” Ice echoed, staring down at his shirt like he could erase the stain from existence if he glared at it hard enough.

Just then, a knock came at the door, and Maverick had barely moved a reasonably platonic distance away from Ice before Jester poked his head into the room. If he was surprised to see Ice there, he didn’t show it. “Meeting in five, gentlemen.”

“We’ll be there,” Maverick said, and Jester grunted once before disappearing again.

“I’ll see if I can get cleaned up a little before I head over there,” Ice said, rising from the chair. He took the now empty cup with him, but stopped right before he could throw it away in the trash can by the door. “Save me a spot?”

Maverick nodded. He wanted to say something about the stain — maybe an apology, even if he wasn’t good at them — but Ice was looking at him with a fond, exasperated smile, the one that was reserved just for him, and it made him feel breathless. “Sure,” he finally said. “See you there, Kazansky.”

Since the door was open, Maverick couldn’t kiss him goodbye, so he settled for the next best thing. He reached out and let his own hand linger on Ice’s just a second longer than necessary, his fingertips caressing the back of Ice’s knuckles as Maverick slowly took the cup from him, never breaking eye contact. Then he let it drop from his hand into the trash can, and waited a beat before he turned on his heel and strolled out of his office — and judging from the way the back of his neck was prickling, Ice was watching every step he took. 

Maverick grinned. Good to know that he could still give as good as he got.

By the time he got to Viper’s office, the meeting was already underway. Sunshine, Gilligan, and most of the other instructors whose names Maverick couldn’t remember were gathered near the window. He took a tentative step in their direction, but Sunshine met his gaze as if to say _don't even think about it,_ and Maverick stayed where he was. He knew the only reason they tolerated him was because Ice liked him, and if Ice wasn’t there, then they didn’t have to pretend to want to put up with him. He couldn’t say he blamed them.

“So until Carter comes back,” Viper was saying, “we’ve got a replacement TAGREP, coming to us straight from Washington. You all already know her, so I won’t waste your time talking up her qualifications.”

In the split second it took for the words to register and Viper’s office door to open, Maverick felt like he’d just plunged a mile underwater. His heart pounded a war-drum beat in his ears, his lungs felt overly tight. Viper was saying something again, but Maverick couldn’t hear it — couldn’t hear anything. Everything was strange, muted, just sound, no meaning.

And yet, he could still hear the sound of high heels clacking against the linoleum floor. Confident, assured steps. His eyes followed the owner of the shoes as she followed Jester into the room, up past her pantyhose-clad legs, her pantsuit, to the blond hair falling to her shoulders in waves. She was wearing lipstick. Bright red. She wore that same shade when she broke things off with him the first time.

Maverick’s stomach turned.

“Thank you, Commander,” Charlie said. Maverick had no idea who she was thanking, or what she was thanking them for. She looked around the room, making eye contact with all of them individually. Then her eyes met his, sending a jolt down his spine, through his heart, and Maverick’s stomach turned again, almost violently. “I’m looking forward to working with you all again this session.”

The crowd started to disperse, each of the instructors stopping by Charlie and saying hello to her like she was the Queen of England or some shit. And then it was just Maverick, Viper, Jester, and Charlie, alone in the room together. This felt like the beginning of a bad joke.

“Hi,” Maverick said at last, when it became clear by Jester’s raised eyebrows that he had to either say something or get out. His voice was slightly hoarse. “Hi, Charlie.”

Charlie smiled at him. It looked genuine enough. “Hello, Pete Mitchell,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” Maverick said. “Yeah, it…it has. Right.”

“I’m sorry I’m late, sir, I…” Ice stopped in his tracks right as he was walking through the door, the front of his shirt dry again. Wariness crossed his face like a shadow the moment he saw who else was in the room with them. 

“Charlie, you remember Tom Kazansky,” Jester said, either willfully ignorant or blissfully unaware of the growing tension in the room. “He was Top Gun of the last class you taught here.”

“Of course,” Charlie said, gracing Ice with a polite smile. Maverick wanted to die. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Lieutenant.”

“Lieutenant Commander.” Ice’s smile was serrated. “And I could say the same.”

Charlie’s smile didn’t twitch, but her eyes narrowed slightly. Then, before she could say anything to Ice — or worse, to Maverick — Viper cleared his throat. “So,” he said, a little wry. “Good to have you with us again, Charlie. You said you wanted to run through the curriculum you laid out?”

“Yes,” Charlie said, suddenly businesslike again. She turned to face Jester and Viper, who met Maverick’s eyes and tipped his chin up for a split second before joining Charlie’s conversation effortlessly.

Maverick didn’t need to be told twice. He was halfway down the hallway before he remembered how to breathe, and he leaned against the nearest wall, swiping his forehead with a hand that was only trembling a little. He felt dizzy, light-headed, like he’d come out of an Immelmann turn way too fast. That wasn’t right. _This_ wasn’t right. None of this was right. _Fuck._

“Mitchell.” Ice was beside him now, moving to stand in front of him. There was a crease pulled tight between his eyebrows; he looked concerned. Yet another thing that Maverick had no fucking clue how to deal with, not from anyone but Goose. “Mav,” he said, this time lower, softer. “You alright?”

He let out a sharp breath through his nose. “Yeah,” he said. He pushed himself off the wall and reached up to pat Ice’s shoulder clumsily. Part thank you, part a way to ground himself. “I’m fine.”

Ice frowned. Clearly he didn’t buy it, but Maverick knew he wasn’t going to push it, especially here, in a hallway crowded with students and instructors on their way to the parking lot. Thank fuck for small miracles.

“Lieutenant!”

Both of them turned around to see Charlie walking briskly toward them, the remaining students parting for her like the Red Sea. _So much for miracles,_ Maverick thought bitterly, before plastering a smile on his face. “Give me a couple minutes,” he said to Ice, forced casual. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot, alright?”

“Sure,” Ice said. He gripped Maverick’s shoulder, a firm, steady grip, his fingers digging in for a brief moment as if to say _don't do anything stupid,_ and walked away just as Charlie closed the distance between them. 

“So,” she said. She raised her chin slightly, as if to gesture at something behind him. “You and Iceman, huh.”

Maverick almost choked on his own tongue. _“What?”_

Her brows rose in an elegant display of confusion. Everything she did was elegant, somehow. “You two seem closer than you were the last time I saw you,” she said mildly. “Practically joined at the hip.”

 _We’ve been joined in more ways than that,_ Maverick thought, and then immediately wanted to bleach the thought from his brain. “Yeah, well,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “A lot’s changed since then. Uh, and it’s Lieutenant Commander now, by the way.”

“Ah, right.” She didn’t apologize, just smiled at him like he was a little kid playing dress up. Funny how almost all of the smiles she’d graced him with back when they were together had been like that, with just a hint of amusement. Ice never smiled at him like that. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” he said. The last students were gone now, leaving them alone. “What’re you doing here, Charlie?”

Her eyes flashed. “I was asked to come back,” she said, her words clipped short. “Carter gave short notice that he was going on medical leave, and since I was TOPGUN’s last TAGREP, one of the higher-ups at the Pentagon asked me to fill in for the session.” She folded her arms over her chest, eyeing him. Maverick fought the urge to flinch. “I didn’t expect you to still be here.”

That rubbed him the wrong way. “Why not?”

This time she smiled at him like he was an overexcited shitzu that had finally learned not to piss in the house. “I just didn’t think you’d ever be satisfied here,” she said. “You know, what with the lack of opportunities to go Mach II with your hair on fire.”

She’d told him the same thing when she left him the first time, and for a while, he thought that was true. Then came the Layton rescue, and he started seeing Goose everywhere he went, every time he closed his eyes, and flying started to lose what made him so happy before. Everything was starting to lose what made him happy, the world going gray with it, and she knew it. That was why she left for good, so he wouldn’t turn her world gray too. “Well,” he said shortly, “I am. Satisfied, I mean. I like it here.”

“Good for you,” she said, the same cool way she’d said _Congratulations._ She took a step forward and lowered her voice, as if she was wary that someone could be listening in. “Listen, Pete. I’ve got a job to do here, and so do you. We’re not going to have a problem working together now that I’m back, are we?”

Color rose to his cheeks despite his best efforts to stop it. “No,” he bit out, embarrassed. He felt like a student again, being ragged out by Jester and Viper for going below the hard deck. He met her gaze as evenly as he could. “We won’t.”

_I hope to hell we won’t, anyway._

* * *

Ice took him out that night. Not to the O Club, which was bound to be packed with the new kids drinking up a storm and trading jibes and jeers over games of darts, but to a bar in La Jolla, twenty minutes outside of town. They went there sometimes for a quieter atmosphere — _a less target-rich environment,_ Maverick said about the O Club once, way back when they first got to Miramar, just to make Goose laugh and fondly say _You live your life between your legs, Mav_ — where nobody would recognize them, and where they had less of a chance of running into somebody they recognized.

They got a booth in the back of the bar, and Ice paid for their drinks. Maverick picked at the label on the bottle of beer before him, wishing they were sitting on the same side of the table so he could rest his head on Ice’s shoulder and just lay like that for a while. Wishing he was brave enough to move and do it anyway.

“It wasn’t all bad,” Maverick said at last. “When I was with Charlie.”

Ice didn’t say anything, just waited, so Maverick continued.

“Things were good, for a while. Then after Goose…” He pressed his lips together until he was sure he could talk without his voice breaking. “She tried, and I tried, but I wasn’t — things just...fell apart.” Ice knew some of the details of their break-up, but he didn’t know everything, and Maverick wanted to keep it that way. He dropped his gaze to the table. “I thought I could handle it because she was going to DC and I’d never have to see her again, you know? But now she’s back, and I…” _I can’t do this again._

“Hey,” Ice said, once his pause had gone on too long. “Mav. Look at me.”

Maverick reluctantly looked back up.

Ice took his hand under the table, squeezing it — not hard, but just to let him know he was there. The same way Goose used to do, sometimes. “It’s only five weeks,” he said, quiet but firm. “You can get through this. And if you need any backup, I’ll be here for you.”

A tiny smile tugged at his mouth. “Is that so?”

“That’s so,” Ice said. “I meant it when I said I’d be your wingman anytime.”

“No,” Maverick said, “you said _I_ could be _your_ wingman anytime.” He grinned. “Gotta say, Kazansky, I’m curious to see how good of a wingman you are in return.”

Ice’s returning grin made warmth pool in the pit of Maverick’s stomach and spread outwards throughout his whole body. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see, Mitchell.”

“Tom Kazansky?”

Maverick turned his head automatically. Standing about ten feet away from their booth was a man with dark hair, spiked up in the back and gleaming under the lights. He was on the shorter side, maybe a couple inches taller than Maverick, and built lean and lithe. He wore cowboy boots, jeans, and a brown leather jacket over a white shirt. His eyes were a bright, familiar blue. 

The color in Ice’s face drained away to something ashen. His throat bobbed as he slowly let go of Maverick’s hand, never taking his eyes off the man standing before them. “Hi,” he said quietly. “Hi, Bill.”

* * *

They were together almost a month before Ice told him about Cougar. Maverick already knew Ice had been with guys before — if how good in the sack Ice was was any indication — but he was surprised when he’d asked Ice if he’d ever been in a real relationship before and the response was a quiet, “Once.”

“Wait, what?” Maverick had stopped and turned to face Ice, who was washing the dishes Maverick had gotten from the table before putting them in the dishwasher. “Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

The image of a younger Ice, his hair a little longer and even blonder, hiding in the shadows outside the school gym and making out with another guy flashed through his mind, and Maverick shoved down the burst of jealousy that threatened to tear through him. “When? How old were you?”

“Twenty-two.”

The image in his head changed a little, but his jealousy didn’t abate. “So you were still in flight school?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, well, well.” Maverick smirked, leaning close to elbow Ice in the side. “Anybody I would have known?”

He’d been hoping that would get a laugh. Instead, Ice’s face went red, and he jerked a cloth around the rim of a glass without saying anything. As Goose would have said, it was clear Maverick had hit more dirt than he’d known to dig for. 

“Was it Slider?”

Ice scoffed. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t Slider. He’s not my type.”

Wow. Okay. Maverick had been very interested to know who _was_ Ice’s type, and if he was Ice’s type too, but that would have to be a question for another time. The only other people Maverick knew who went to flight school with Ice were Goose and… “Wait,” he said, disbelievingly. “Was it Goose?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake — Mitchell, if I was in love with Goose at some point, don’t you think I would have told you?”

“I don’t know! I mean, the only other people you went to flight school with that I know were Goose and — oh.”

Ice dropped his gaze to the sink. “Yeah,” he said heavily. “Oh.”

“You and Cougar?” Maverick felt weird just saying it, and felt even worse when he saw Ice’s shoulders tense. “You were in love with him?”

Ice gave a tight nod. His voice was barely audible when he said, “He broke my heart.”

Maverick had thought a lot about Cougar, after that. Not in _that_ way, more in the way of _holy fucking shit who would ever let Iceman Kazansky go._ And that night, after he’d said, “I’ll kill him,” and Ice had kind of laughed his completely serious comment off, Maverick promised himself that if he ever saw Cougar again, he’d drop him like a bad habit.

And now here they were, and Maverick couldn’t do anything but stare.

“Hey, Tom,” Cougar said. He reached out like he wanted to shake Ice’s hand, but when Ice didn’t move, he put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on the heels of his boots. “It’s, uh, it’s good to see you. And — Maverick.” If he was surprised to see Maverick sitting there, he didn’t show it. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Maverick said. He didn’t reach out to shake Cougar’s hand either. “What’re you doing here?”

Ice looked like he was torn between asking the same question and smacking Maverick on the back of the head. Cougar palmed the back of his neck. “I guess San Diego’s a bit far off from San Antonio,” he conceded with an awkward laugh. “But I needed to take some time for myself, so, uh...here I am.”

“Right,” Maverick said. Ice still wasn’t saying anything, and the way Cougar was acting now — all self-conscious and hesitant — was such a far cry from the man he’d known on the _Enterprise_ that he had no idea what to do. _Guess he lost the edge in more ways than one,_ he thought, but that wasn’t fair. He’d lost the edge too. Cougar had just given up trying to get back to it. “So how’s your wife?”

“Tammi? She’s great. I mean, uh...we sort of decided to take things in a different direction. Away from being married.” A beat. “We got divorced.”

“Fuck,” Maverick said. “Fuck, I’m — sorry, I didn’t—”

“No, no, it’s fine. I mean, Tammi’s happy now and we’ve got an 80/20 custody agreement for Billy, so…” Cougar bit his lip and shrugged, looking over at Ice. “I guess it’s for the best. Like it was meant to happen, or something.”

Maverick’s stomach lurched. Ice’s jaw twitched. “That’s great,” he said, in a way that signified the exact opposite. “Good for you, Cougar.”

“You can still call me Bill, if you want,” Cougar said. He kept his voice low, but not low enough that Maverick couldn’t hear him. He was probably doing that on purpose, the fucker. “Like you used to.”

 _Like you used to._ Maverick wanted to kill him.

“I used to do a lot of things,” Ice said, and lifted his glass of bourbon to his mouth. His hand was trembling, almost imperceptibly, but he maintained eye contact. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you.” The words all came out in a rush, complete with a pleading look.

Ice didn’t look moved. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“We were kind of in the middle of something,” Maverick cut in. Cougar looked taken aback, like he’d forgotten Maverick was even there, and then he flushed red. Maverick tried not to grin too openly; Carole would be pleased to know that her lessons on how to be politely petty to full effect had finally come in handy. “Before you interrupted.”

“Right. Of course.” Cougar took a step back, but his gaze was still on Ice. “I get it. But, uh, if you change your mind, here.” He set down a business card on the table and slid it towards Ice, who didn’t move to take it. “It’s...for the motel I’m stayin’ at. Room six.” He hesitated for a second, like he was hoping one of them was going to try and stop him, and then he patted the table twice and walked back over to the bar.

“Jesus shit,” Maverick said, stunned. “Did that just happen?”

Ice didn’t answer. He’d picked up the business card and was examining it, holding it up to the lights like it was a counterfeit dollar bill. Then he crumpled it up and stuck it into his glass of bourbon, the paper jumbling some of the melting ice cubes.

“Ice,” Maverick said. The name stuck in his throat on the way out. “Hey. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Ice let out a long breath through his nose and ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it. His other hand was on the table next to his glass, and Maverick wanted to reach out and take it. He would have — the people in the bar be damned — if Ice hadn’t decided to get out of the booth just then. “I think I’ll head out. Kind of tired.”

Maverick didn’t have to check his watch to know that it was barely past nine o’clock, but he stood up too. “Yeah, okay,” he said. Casual, easy. “I’ll just head out too, then.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Maverick said. “I mean, you did drive us here, so.”

To his relief, that got a laugh, and a nudge in the side. “Come on.”

Maverick could feel Cougar’s stare on their backs all the way out of the bar.

* * *

“So, uh...you’re okay?”

Ice bit Maverick’s earlobe lightly, and Maverick shivered. “I think I’m more than okay right now,” he said with a smirk. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late,” Maverick said with a grin, and stuck his tongue out when Ice rolled his eyes. He shifted onto his back, and Ice curled up next to him on his side, pulling the covers up to their chests.

Maverick ran a hand through Ice’s hair slowly, rhythmically, and Ice made a small, satisfied sigh and moved closer. He hadn’t planned on having Ice over for the night — they had to come up with rules about not spending the night too often after one of Ice’s neighbors got suspicious of Maverick’s motorcycle and called the cops, and Ice was a stickler for the rules — but he definitely wasn’t complaining. (Even if he knew Ice was going to give him hell later for not having washed his sheets in over two weeks.)

He could handle Charlie being back. The idea of it, anyway, because it was all professional. She hadn’t come back here for him, she’d come here for the job, and like Ice had said, she’d be out of his life again in no time. He could handle it until then. But Cougar had left the Navy and divorced his wife and now he’d driven all the way from Texas all because he wanted to talk to Ice. Just the thought made his stomach clench.

“The cowboy boots made him look like a douche,” Maverick said. 

He felt rather than heard the answering shake of Ice’s laugh. “He had the same pair back in flight school,” he said. “Wore them with a pair of Raybans to the O Club every night.” His voice went bitter. “He was a douche back then too.”

Maverick bit his lip. He hadn’t known Cougar all that well, back on the _Enterprise._ He was squadron leader, and Stinger’s favorite, and they never really talked outside of the air and the locker room and that one time outside Stinger’s office — not that Maverick cared. He already had a friend in Goose, and he hadn’t thought he’d be lucky enough to get another, even if he wanted one.

But Ice had known Cougar before he was even Cougar, back when he was just Bill Cortell. And if Maverick felt awkward seeing Cougar again, he could only imagine how Ice felt.

“Why do you think he wants to talk to you?”

Maverick regretted it the second the words left his mouth. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that — he’d wanted to ease into the conversation, go slow, even if he only ever went into these types of conversations with his eyes closed and the gas pedal all the way down. But Ice just let out a breath and said, “I don’t know.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Can we not talk about him right now?”

“Yeah,” Maverick said. “Yeah, sure. I just...wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Ice was quiet for a while. “I’m okay,” he finally said, and he sounded like he meant it. “Are you?”

Maverick tipped back his head. “Yeah,” he said. If he said it enough, maybe he’d convince himself. “I think so.”

Ice kissed him at the base of his throat, then moved higher, brushing his lips along the line of Maverick’s jaw. “You want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Alright,” Ice said, and smiled, nice and slow and open. Just knowing that smile was directed at him made Maverick feel off-balance in the best way, like taking to the air after way too long on the ground, going zero to a hundred so fast that the world blurred around you. Sometimes that was all Ice had to do to take him the fuck apart, these days. Just look at him like that, with that KO smile, and Maverick was gone before he even realized what was happening.

“So,” Maverick said. He climbed over Ice and straddled him, his knees bracketing Ice’s hips, his dog tags brushing against Ice’s chest. He slid a warm hand down the muscles of Ice’s stomach, and a smirk curved his mouth when Ice palmed Maverick’s ass and rocked up against him, just a little bit, just to show interest. “Since we aren’t talking…”

“Twist my arm, Mitchell,” Ice said with a smirk of his own, and pulled Maverick down by his dog tags and kissed him hard. He rolled them over so he was the one on top this time, pinning Maverick to the mattress with one hand and holding onto Maverick’s dog tags with the other, and all thoughts of Cougar and Charlie rapidly left his mind, chased away by a blissful now.

* * *

Maverick woke up at two, his head too clear and his heart beating too fast. 

He raised himself up on his elbow, using his free hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. He could still smell the ocean, the ozone, the burning metal. He could still hear Goose’s panicked voice in his ears, only this time it’d been worse. All he could do this time was sit frozen as the plane hurtled downward, the controls inches away but miles out of his reach, thinking _can’t land this plane, can’t land this plane, I’ve lost the edge._ And then, later, in the ocean as he held Goose’s body like a lifeline and tried to keep them both afloat, a bare, cool whisper: _Pathetic._ He shuddered at the memory.

When Maverick turned his head, Ice was awake, staring at him. His hair was still messy from when Maverick had run his hands through it earlier, and his lips and eyes were thick with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

Maverick shook his head and laid back down, turning away from Ice, and held the sheets in a sweaty, white-knuckled grip until he stopped shaking. He wanted to bury himself in Ice’s embrace and never come out again, but forced himself to lay still. It was his fault he was having these nightmares in the first place, and his fault that he couldn’t stop having them. _Ice wouldn’t try to help you if he knew the truth,_ he told himself firmly. _And you don't deserve him or his help. You need to get through this on your own._

* * *

Some of the instructors at TOPGUN made up their minds about what kind of pilots the kids were going to be from their first day in the classroom, or their first look through the kids’ files. Maverick didn’t care about any of that: he only cared about how they flew. There were hotshots in every class, the kids who flew by the seats of their pants and thought the rules of engagement were opinions that didn’t apply to them, and then there were the kids who Ice liked for their technical proficiency, and the quiet kids who Maverick appreciated for their lack of backtalk, if nothing else.

Then there were the ruthless ones, the ones that made him uneasy when he saw them in the air. Jinx and Ax were ruthless.

The thing was, back when he and Ice were students, they fought all the time — in the locker room, in the O Club, over their flying styles, over which of them was going to be Top Gun, everything — but Maverick had never _actually_ hated him. He might have thought Ice was a repressed tight-ass with infuriatingly nice hands, but he still respected Ice as a pilot and a wingman, and cared about his opinion (maybe a little too much). Like Viper said, when they were out there, they were all on the same team. You couldn’t fly combat with a wingman who hated your guts, or the other way around.

But Jinx and Ax hated each other from the minute they met, _really_ hated each other, and it made them ruthless when they flew. It became something of a routine by the end of the first week and continued into the second: on the ground, Ax would rile Jinx up until her cold exterior cracked, and then Jinx would bite out a comeback that’d make Ax flush with anger, and Hawk and Taz would have to pull them apart before things escalated to blows. And in the air, they swore at each other over the comms, and more than once Maverick’s heart leapt up his throat when Ax got frustrated and abruptly did a chandelle that almost knocked Jinx out of the sky. They were neck in neck for the trophy, separated by no more than a point, and Maverick knew one of their names was going to be on it. He just didn’t know which one.

And now, on top of that, he had Charlie to contend with.

He thought they had an unspoken agreement: as long as she was here, Maverick would stay out of her way, and she’d stay out of his. But it was like the universe was conspiring against him — not that that was new — because everywhere he went, Charlie went too. He’d go to the hangar to prepare for his next class, only to find that Charlie was still in there wiping trajectories and equations off the chalkboard. He’d go to the lounge in the morning, and Charlie would already be there, sitting next to Gilligan and Sunshine and the others and arching her eyebrows at him when he looked in their direction. He’d go to Ice’s office to have lunch with him, and Charlie would be there, borrowing some files from Ice, or asking Ice about where the others from their graduating class had ended up. He figured he ought to be grateful that she wasn’t talking to him directly, but it just made him feel even more on edge, somehow.

He only had two classes on Fridays, after which he had to go up to the tracking tower with Viper while Ice and Jester flew with the kids. Maverick had gone up in the air with Sunshine for the morning hop, which had been all kinds of fun. He liked flying with Ice best, how Ice always knew the next move Maverick was going to make, and the one after that, and how Maverick knew his too. Still, he liked to think that Viper didn’t partner him and Ice together as often because he wanted the kids to have a slight advantage in the air. Viper could be nice like that, sometimes — he’d found room for Maverick at TOPGUN, after all.

“Excuse me — Commander Mitchell, sir?”

Maverick’s gaze snapped to Hawk and Ax, who were standing in front of him expectantly. The classroom was empty now; the other kids were probably on their way to the locker room. He wondered how many times they’d said his name already. “Sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “Uh, something I can do for you?”

“Yes sir,” Ax said. “Uh, I was wondering—”

 _“We,”_ Hawk cut in. “We were wondering.”

“Right. Sorry, Hawk,” Ax said, and the knife in Maverick’s chest twinged again. _“We_ were wondering, sir, if you could help us out. Lieutenant Rubin,” _Jinx,_ Maverick’s mind helpfully supplied, “has been keeping us on our toes pretty good lately, and there’s only three weeks left now, so, uh — usually when either you or Commander Metcalf or Commander Heatherly or anybody has us in gunsight, I usually do an Immelmann to get us out of there, but…is that the best move to make in that scenario? Sir?”

“I, uh…” A noise from behind him distracted him for a moment, but he pressed on. “I think an Immelmann is fine, in that scenario. Couldn’t hurt to try doing a rolling scissors, you know — reverse into a vertical climb and into a barrel roll over the top, try to get whoever’s attacking you to follow, and then you’d—”

Then there was that noise again, almost a scoff. Maverick turned to see Charlie behind him, standing by the chalkboard, outlining her lesson plans with a slight shake of her head.

“Something you want to add, Charlie?” he said, not even bothering to keep his voice polite.

Charlie cast an annoyed look at him over her shoulder and turned away from the board, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well, Lieutenant Commander,” she said, “I think what you described is the perfect example of what _not_ to do in a scenario like that.”

Maverick stiffened, a hot flush of embarrassment burning his way up the back of his neck. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that sometimes the most dangerous maneuver isn’t the right one,” she said, cool as could be. To an uncomfortable-looking Ax, she said, “An unloaded extension would work well in the scenario you described, Lieutenant.”

“They didn’t ask you,” Maverick snapped. His embarrassment was quickly giving way to indignation, enough that his hands shook with it. “They wanted my opinion, Charlie.”

“They wanted to know what the best move would be for that scenario,” Charlie said. God damn her, she was right, but that just made him more furious. “That and your opinion aren’t always one and the same.”

And with that, she grabbed the thermos that she’d placed on Maverick’s desk — a fucking thermos, because she was too good to carry her coffee in cups like the rest of them — and swept out of the room. The silence she left behind was as stifling as a dry heat; Hawk’s awkward throat-clearing just made it worse.

“Dismissed,” Maverick said tightly, without looking at either Ax or Hawk, and he waited for them to leave before he took off down the hall after Charlie.

She was heading in the direction of the lounge, but he wasn’t about to let her go without giving her a piece of his mind. He caught up to her in about ten seconds. “Hey! Where do you get off doing that, huh?”

She didn’t stop or turn around, just kept walking, which pissed him off even more. “They asked what the best option for them would be, and I told them,” she said. “I find it hard to believe that someone who always said you don't have time to think up there would have the answer Ax and Hawk were looking for.”

“Aren’t _you_ the one who said you saw some _real genius_ in my flying?” The way it came out made him feel like a little kid. “Or was that just a line too?”

That yanked her up short. Charlie whirled around, and Maverick took petty satisfaction at the sight of two spots of red blossoming high up on her cheekbones as she got up close to him. “There is a difference between a good pilot and a good teacher, _Maverick,”_ she said icily. “Teachers aren’t here to showboat; they’re here to teach the pilots the correct maneuvers before they get someone killed up there.”

The world froze, the words seemingly suspended in the air between them, echoing distantly like they were coming up from the bottom of a well. All Maverick could do was stare straight ahead, uncomprehending and unable to respond, his heart jackhammering against his ribs at a dizzying beat.

 _No,_ he wanted to say, _no, I didn’t, Goose wasn’t, that was an accident, it wasn’t my fault,_ but it was drowned out by the sound of a surprisingly shaky breath, the kind of breathing he heard over the comms when Cougar was pleading at Merlin, _Can’t land this plane._ Was that what everybody thought about him? That it was only a matter of time before he did something or said something that got somebody else killed?

“Maverick,” came Viper’s voice from a hundred miles away, and Maverick turned his head like he was moving through molasses. Viper was standing outside the lounge; he had his shades on and his arms crossed over his chest, and he wasn’t smiling. How much had he heard? “Grab me a spare clipboard from my office before you head over to the tracking tower, will you?”

“Yes sir,” he said, through slightly numb lips.

Charlie spared him a glance — her expression nothing but professional, even if she didn’t quite look him in the eyes — before sweeping into the lounge, and Maverick forced himself to walk steadily down the hall to Viper’s office. 

If his eyes were red-rimmed when he arrived at the tracking tower with a spare clipboard in hand, Viper didn’t call him out on it. 

* * *

Two hours later, he used his spare key to unlock the door and sat down at Ice’s kitchen table, his head in his hands. About half an hour later, Maverick heard the door slam, and if Ice was surprised to see him there, he didn’t comment. Instead, Maverick heard him cross the room and rummage through the fridge, and then Ice walked up behind him, putting one hand on Maverick’s shoulder. In his other hand he had a beer with the cap already twisted off, which Maverick took.

“Heard you and Charlie talked,” Ice said, casual but careful, and took the seat next to him. “You alright?”

Maverick took a long pull of his beer. “Better now,” he said, even though _before you get somebody killed up there_ was still pounding against the inside of his head — making him, for the first time in his life, intimately aware of the shape and size of his skull. It was okay, though. Being with Ice made the pressure easier to bear. “She didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

Ice frowned. “What’d she say to you?”

Maverick opened his mouth, then closed it. What was he supposed to say, anyway? That she was mean to him? That she'd hurt his feelings? _Don't be so fucking pathetic._

 _Pathetic,_ came that cool voice again, and he got lost in the night she left him for good. She was putting her clothes back on, and he couldn’t do anything but stay in bed, try to keep the tears from coming. _The evidence showed that it wasn’t your fault, Pete. Why are you still letting this get to you? Why do you keep refusing to move on?_

 _Charlie,_ he’d tried — begged, more like, because he’d keep quiet about the nightmares, his feelings, everything, just so she wouldn’t leave him alone, he didn’t want to be alone again — but she just shook her head.

 _I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got Washington ahead of me, and I — please understand, Pete, I deserve more than this. I deserve better._ From the way she’d gestured at him, it was clear what she’d meant: _I deserve better than you._

 _Right,_ he’d said in return, through the tears in his eyes. _Glad we got that straight._

Ice wasn’t anything like Charlie, Maverick knew. He’d actually known Goose, and he knew how important Goose was to Maverick, and he never made Maverick feel ashamed of who he was. He made Maverick feel safe. But Maverick thought Charlie had understood him too — or had been willing to try, anyway _—_ and remembered how easy their time together had been before he’d ruined it by telling her too much, and he refused to take that same chance with Ice. He _refused._ He couldn’t lose Ice too.

“Ax and Hawk asked for some advice,” Maverick finally said. “Charlie and me, we...disagreed, that’s all. About what to tell them.”

Ice nodded slowly. “They ask you for advice, or did they ask her?”

 _Me._ “Both of us.”

“Well,” Ice said lightly. “If it were me, I’d take a pilot’s advice about what to do in the air over a TAGREP’s any day.”

Even though that was only part of what had him down, Maverick felt some of his tension ebb away. “Even if it’s me?”

“Yeah,” Ice said. “Especially if it’s you.”

Maverick smiled, just a little. “You might end up doing something dangerous, Kazansky.”

“I’ll risk it,” Ice said seriously, but he was smiling when Maverick kissed him.

It was uncomfortable kissing Ice with the edge of the table poking him in the stomach, so Maverick just got up and sat on Ice’s lap, continuing where they left off. Ice had one hand gripping Maverick’s hip and the other threading tightly through Maverick’s hair, and he tilted Maverick’s head at just the angle he wanted it before kissing him back, slow and hot and perfect. “Missed you,” Maverick mumbled when they broke apart, and Ice gave a breathy sort of laugh.

“You saw me at work all day, Mitchell.”

“Not the same thing.” He hadn’t even had the chance to really be with Ice since last weekend, aside from a few stolen kisses at work and a quickie in Ice’s car in the O Club parking lot, and Maverick craved Ice’s presence like a drug. “Missed being with you like this.”

“Well,” and now Maverick could feel Ice’s grin, and his fingers as they trailed down Maverick’s back. “We’ve got the next two days for you to be with me any way you’d like.”

Maverick grinned back. “Fuck yeah we do.”

* * *

It was a good weekend. Maverick slept over at Ice’s on Friday and Saturday, and he took Ice out to dinner in Encinitas, and then to a bar with a nice ocean view, where they played darts to see who’d have to pay for their drinks. (That was a routine of theirs now too, and sometimes the outcome settled things other than the tab. Those nights, Maverick tended to lose on purpose.) Still. It was nice, not having to think about Charlie or Ax or Jinx for a little while.

Even though he’d been parking in Ice’s garage for the last two days so nobody would get suspicious of his bike, they still had rules about this thing of theirs, so Ice was going to sleep at Maverick’s tonight, but he’d insisted on parking halfway down the block instead of on Maverick’s driveway. Maverick once told Ice he was lucky that Maverick found paranoia sexy, which had earned him an unimpressed stare and a lot of time on his knees that night.

Ice was in the shower now, but as soon as he got out, they’d head over to Maverick’s together. Maverick was busying himself by snooping through the crowded bookshelf in the living room when the phone rang, startling him enough that he almost dropped a dog-eared copy of Catch-22 on the floor. Instinctively, he moved back into the kitchen before remembering he probably shouldn’t be answering the phone at Ice’s house. Unless it was Ice’s parents — in which case, he’d let the machine take it and then pick up the phone and cut in. Ice’s parents liked him; maybe they’d let him say hello to their cat.

 _“Tom? It’s Bill. Cortell. Uh, Cougar,”_ came the voice on the other end. Maverick’s head snapped up so fast he swore he felt his neck crack. _“I was just calling to see if you got my messages from earlier, about...you know, about if you wanted to talk. Uh, you’ve got my number, so...call me back. Please. Bye.”_

What the fuck, Maverick thought. There was a strange, high buzzing in his ears that made it hard to do anything but stare straight ahead at the now-silent answering machine. What the fuck. What the _fuck._

The sound of footsteps echoed near the kitchen, and then came to a sudden stop next to him. “Hey,” Ice said. He was dressed now, and his hair was damp, and he had his overnight bag slung over his shoulder. “What’s the matter?” He nodded at the phone, which was resting innocently in its cradle like it hadn’t just inverted Maverick’s world. “Someone call?”

“Cougar,” Maverick said. His voice was a rasp. “Cougar called.”

Ice’s face went stiff. He looked like he’d been carved from marble, chiseled into a statue before Maverick’s very eyes. The rise and fall of his chest was the only indication that he was breathing at all.

“He left you a message,” he said numbly. “He’s been leaving you messages. He’s been—” He could taste copper rising sharply in the back of his throat, filling his mouth. “You didn’t tell me.”

“You didn’t need to know,” Ice said.

“Bullshit.”

“Mav—”

 _“Bullshit._ I need to know. I _want_ to know. When the guy who broke your fucking heart keeps calling you to ask if you can talk, I want to know. Christ, Ice, how the fuck did he even get your number?”

“I gave it to him.”

Maverick’s hand, which he’d been just about to run through his hair, stilled. “What?”

“I called him. Last week.” Ice’s voice was a little too calm and smooth to be genuine. Maverick couldn’t move. “It was the middle of the night. I was drunk. I couldn’t — I thought if I called him, if I told him off, I’d be able to get him out of my head.” Maverick pictured Ice and Cougar, illuminated by the moon, talking to each other in the middle of the night about everything, Ice calling Cougar _Bill_ in the same soft way he said _Mav,_ and a fist twisted in his gut. “But I...I couldn’t do it. I hung up after a minute, but he used last-call return to find my number.” Ice pressed his lips together. He looked embarrassed. Vulnerable. “And now he keeps calling me.”

Maverick thought about what he could say, what he wanted to say, and finally settled on, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Ice shook his head once, roughly. “Because it wasn’t a big deal.”

“Oh, come on—”

“If I actually talked to him, I would’ve told you,” Ice said, maddeningly and infuriatingly patient. “Nothing happened. I didn’t want to tell you until there was something to tell.”

“Is there going to be something to tell?” Maverick retorted. “Are you going to call him back?”

“I don’t know.”

Maverick blinked, incredulous. “You don’t, you don’t _know?_ What the hell do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I _don’t fucking know,_ Mitchell, alright?” Ice snapped. Now he was pissed. Good, because Maverick was pissed too. “I can’t — for fuck’s sake, I don’t even know what I’d say to him.”

“How about ‘leave me the fuck alone, you fucking douche, I don't want to talk to you?’ How’s that for a start?”

“It’s not that simple, Maverick.”

“Bullshit it’s not.” Maverick was shaking. “It’s exactly that simple. You don’t want to talk to him, so that’s what you should say.”

“Maybe I do want to talk to him.”

“What?” The knife dug deeper, cutting through bone and blood and sinew. “He broke your fucking heart, Kazansky. Why the hell would you want to talk to him? What the fuck are you even going to talk to him about? Work? The Lakers?”

Ice didn’t rise to the bait. “Maybe I want closure, Maverick. Did you think of that?”

“You don’t need closure,” Maverick said automatically. He meant it, too. He’d come face to face with his ex practically every day for the last two weeks, and he never got the urge to find Charlie and ask her to talk so he could get closure. She’d made it clear when they broke things off exactly how she felt about him. “It’s overrated.”

“Not to me,” Ice said quietly.

Maverick felt hot and cold all over, like his veins had frozen beneath his burning skin. “What do you think you’re going to get out of it?” he said. Then, even though he was a little scared of what the answer could be: “What do you even _want_ to get out of it?”

“I don’t know,” Ice said, clearly irritated, though to which question Maverick didn’t know. He took a long breath in and let it out slowly, trying to get himself back together. Ice cold, no mistakes. Maverick envied that, a little. Usually he kept burning and burning until there was nothing left of him (or anyone around him) but ash. “Look,” he said at last. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this. But when I actually talk to him,” _when, not if,_ Maverick noted, “I’ll tell you everything. Alright?”

_No. No it’s not alright. Don’t do this. What if he hurts you again? What if you talk to him and you make up with him? What will you tell me then? What if you—_

“Alright,” Maverick said. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Ice nodded once, then twice. He adjusted the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder, and said, “I can stay the night here, if you want.”

“No,” Maverick said. He understood that Ice was offering to give him some space, but he really, really didn’t want to be alone with the harsh undercurrent of his thoughts right now. “I’m ready to head out if you are.”

He turned on his heel and walked out the door before Ice could answer.

* * *

Maverick drifted.

Cool waves lapped at his face, at his arms, tugging gently at his clothes. The sun beat down on him, white-hot in the strangely cloudless sky, so bright that his vision blurred at the edges and he had to avert his eyes. He wished he brought his sunglasses. Or maybe a swimsuit. His flight suit wasn’t really cutting it.

“S’nice, like this.” His voice was a low rasp. His lips were cracked, and tasted like salt when he wet them with his tongue. “We should do this more often.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth did he realize that there was, in fact, a we. There was someone next to him, on top of him, really; lying in the circle of his arms. A numbing, fearful cold spread through him and the world around him, blocking the sun, stopping his heart as he looked down at the dark blond hair in front of his nose, at the green fabric of another flight suit, singed and sprinkled with ash. At the familiar angles of an equally familiar face, now covered in blood. 

“No.” His chest seized. “No. No, no — Ice?” He gave Ice’s shoulder a little shake, his hands trembling, then again, harder, when there was no response. His fingers fumbled across Ice’s lips, under his nose, on his throat, but Ice’s head just lolled to the side at the touch. Tears burned Maverick’s eyes, but Ice’s wouldn’t open, not even when Maverick said his name again. Terrified, Maverick shifted up and over Ice, on top of him, and pressed his ear against Ice’s chest, to the spot where he always rested his head, where he knew he’d always hear the strong and steady beat of Ice’s heart.

Instead, he found silence.

“No.” Maverick’s breath was catching with his sobs, his chest on fire. He couldn’t see for tears. He couldn’t see anything but Ice, not dead, but alive. The first time he smiled at Maverick, really smiled, and every smile he’d earned after that. The way he looked coming out of a plane, his hair windswept and the sun turning his body into a bright silhouette. How open and vulnerable his face was after he kissed Maverick that first time, how he trusted Maverick enough to let his walls down around him. His trust, the trust he gave Maverick. He should have been worthy of that trust. He should have died, died a hundred times over, rather than let Iceman Kazansky die. “No, no — Ice, c’mon Ice, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta wake up, Ice, please, you can’t — _God no Ice please don’t leave me please not you too—”_

The water kept lapping at him, at both of them, and Maverick tightened his grip on Ice, treading water against the current that seemed to pull at him, at Ice’s still body in his arms, whispering _Maverick_ like a curse. He couldn’t do it. He kicked and panted and the tears poured from him like blood, but he couldn’t keep them above the water. They were sinking. He was sinking. Ice was floating — _Ice please no God please_ — because the dead didn’t sink, and Maverick was being torn away from him, dragged away, down, down, into the endless dark blue.

He had to get back — he tried, he tried, he flailed wildly, making contact with the surprisingly solid current to no avail, screamed a stream of bubbles and choked on the water that filled his mouth — he had to get back — there were hands on him, burning him, voices calling his name — Ice’s voice, he had to get back, he had to, _Ice, Ice, ICE—_

“Maverick. Maverick!”

* * *

“Maverick, Mav, it’s okay, damn it, it’s okay—”

There were hands on him again, but he shoved them away, moaning with pain as he clutched his head in his hands. Every inch of his body was covered in icy sweat; his sheets were twisted all around him like a straitjacket. His stomach lurched, his chest heaved for air, and before he could stop himself, he groaned, leaned forward and vomited all over the bed.

“Oh fuck, Jesus — Mav, hey, no, no, shit,” for Maverick’s breaths were coming too quick and small to hold onto, and he had dug his fingers into the sides of his head hard enough that his nails were going numb. “It’s okay, Mav, it’s okay, breathe. Just breathe, okay?” 

_Easier said than done,_ he thought wildly, and his laugh came out like a strangled, hysterical sob.

“It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. Just breathe. In and out, baby. Come on.”

He took a harsh breath in and let it out so fast he almost threw up again.

“Good. Come on, again. In and out. In and out.”

Slowly, he breathed in and out, letting the instructions steady him, and the world around him started to unblur back into focus. He was in his house, in his bed, with the sheets strewn around him and his dog tags knotted up and tangled around his neck. It was still dark out; the only light in the room came from the lamp on the nightstand. He wasn’t drowning. He wasn’t in the ocean. He was okay.

And Ice was here. He was half-kneeling next to Maverick on the bed, his face drawn and pale, the covers thrown off him. There was a reddening spot the size of a fist near the bottom of his chin — Maverick’s stomach lurched again, remembering with a guilty pang the strange solidness of the current in his dream — and dark shadows under his eyes, which stared intently into Maverick’s own.

“Mav,” Ice said, cautious, careful, “are you,” but Maverick threw himself at Ice before he could say anything more. His shoulders shook as silent, relieved tears spilled down his cheeks, as Ice’s arms came around Maverick in a grip that was both tight and gentle, tentatively stroking Maverick’s back.

“Shh,” Ice whispered. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

 _“You’re_ okay,” Maverick tried to say, but it came out as another broken sob. Instead, he buried his face in the crook of Ice’s neck, and (hating himself for it) let Ice hold him, and let himself cry.

* * *

Maverick sat at the kitchen table, staring at his hands and listening to the clock tick. It was almost three o’clock in the morning now; at two thirty, Ice had escorted him out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, put a glass of water in his hands, and told him to sit and wait before he disappeared down the hall. Five minutes had passed, then ten, then twenty, and Ice still wasn’t back. Maverick kept taking small sips of the water. It was cold, refreshing. His hands were still shaking.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had a nightmare like this. He had the same dream the night after the funeral, and the night after that, and then again after the Layton rescue, when he started seeing Goose everywhere he went and wondered if he was losing his mind for good. But this was the first time that Ice had been inserted into the setting, lifeless and bloody in his arms, and Maverick swallowed back a mouthful of bile. He went to take another sip of water, but the glass was empty. There were finger marks all over the condensation on the glass.

“You feeling okay?”

Maverick looked up. Ice was standing in the kitchen now, his arms crossed over his chest. Still alive, still okay. “I’m okay,” he said.

“Good.” Ice stepped forward, but when Maverick stood up too, he said, “No. Sit down.”

“What are you—”

_“Sit down.”_

Maverick sat down.

Ice didn’t sit. He just stood there, leveling Maverick with an even stare, and Maverick stared back. Finally, when it became clear Ice wasn’t going to be the first one to talk, Maverick said, “What?”

“You had a nightmare about me dying,” Ice said. Before Maverick could nod — he wasn’t going to try and deny it, not when Ice said he’d been thrashing around and screaming Ice’s name in his sleep — Ice said, “Was that what your other ones were about?”

Maverick’s heart skipped and skidded in his chest like a faulty record player. “What?” He tried for a laugh. “What other ones?”

Ice made a face like, _Yeah, pull the other one,_ the same face that Goose used to make when Maverick said something stupid; the familiarity made Maverick’s chest feel tight. “I know you’ve been having nightmares,” he said. “I’m not a fucking idiot. I’ve seen your face when you wake up in the middle of the night, I’ve seen the way you dodge my questions about them. And I never asked you about them because I didn’t think it was my business—”

“You’re right,” Maverick said. He felt dizzy, and he stood up, holding onto the table with one hand and onto his dog tags with the other. The blanket slipped from his shoulders and fell silently onto the floor. “Because it’s not your business.”

Ice wasn’t listening to him. “—But tonight you punched me in the face in your sleep and puked on the bed and made it my fucking business. So now I’m asking you, Maverick: what were your other nightmares about?”

Maverick looked away. It would have been one thing if Ice had asked how long this had been going on — he could have worked around that — but this... “I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Why — Jesus Christ, Kazansky, does there have to be a fucking reason? Maybe I just want to keep things to myself. You know, the way you kept that little detail about Cougar calling you a hundred times to yourself.”

He felt a little satisfied when that made Ice flinch, but not enough that it outweighed his guilt. Or the knowledge that he was being a hypocrite. “Fuck you,” Ice said. “That’s not fair, that wasn’t a big deal, nothing even happened — and if something _had,_ I would have fucking told you about it, alright?”

“Oh really.”

“Yes, ‘oh really,’” Ice snapped. “I fucking would have. But we aren’t talking about me right now, we’re talking about you and the nightmares you keep having and keep electing not to tell me about. Were they all about me dying? Was that it?”

“No, that was just — look, Kazansky, you don’t need to know, alright? Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

“Bullshit,” Ice said. Maverick didn’t know if Ice was throwing back his words in his face on purpose, but he hated it anyway. _“Bullshit._ You think I’d be asking you if I didn’t want to know? I want to know, Maverick. Tell me. Talk to me.”

“I’m not — this isn’t — this doesn’t have anything to do with you—”

“I don’t care! You’re hurting, you’ve been hurting, and I want to understand, I want to know what I can do to fix it! Was it something I did to you? Did I say something that made you—”

He clutched his dog tags tight enough to leave a permanent imprint. “I’m telling you, Kazansky, that’s not it!”

“Then _what is it?_ Why the hell won’t you just—”

_“They’re about Goose, alright?!”_

Ice’s face went blank, his body going slack in surprise. There was no sound in the room other than the ticking of the clock. Maverick was inexplicably reminded of the night Ice kissed him for the first time. They’d been having an argument too — but Maverick knew this argument wasn’t going to end in a kiss. The thought made a rigid tension clench hot in his throat.

“They’re about Goose,” he whispered. “Him dying, him already dead. About that...that day. I haven’t been able to — I’ve tried, I swear I’ve been trying, but I can’t stop dreaming about him. He’s...he’s always in my head. And I know…” His voice broke, and he tipped his head back, willing the wet warmth in the corners of his eyes to go right back in. He wasn’t going to cry. Not now, not again. “I know I should have moved on by now, I know, I’m sorry, but I—”

“How long has this been going on?”

Ice’s voice was dangerously soft, the kind of softness that demanded the truth whether he wanted to give one or not. Maverick swallowed. “Since he died.”

Ice laughed, the kind of laugh that was mostly just air, and he shook his head. Still shaking his head, he moved over to the kitchen counter and leaned back against it, and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. He stayed like that so long that Maverick didn’t know what to do.

“Four months,” Ice finally said.

Maverick blinked. “No,” he said. “Seven and a half, since Goose—”

“No,” Ice said, in a tone Maverick didn’t entirely know. “We’ve been together for four months. You’ve been dreaming about Goose dying for all of that time.”

It wasn’t a question, but Maverick nodded anyway.

“Four months,” Ice said again. He still hadn’t looked back up. “And you...were you ever going to say anything? Were you ever planning on telling me?”

“I…” His mouth was dry. “I didn’t...I thought you didn’t need to know. I was handling it.” Ice gave a derisive scoff, which Maverick ignored. “Look, you didn’t need to know how fucked up I really am, alright?” _I didn’t want you to know how fucked up I really am._

Ice’s head snapped up. “You’re not fucked up,” he said sharply. “You’re grieving.”

Now it was Maverick’s turn to scoff. “I can’t be both?”

“You can be,” Ice said, like he was trying really, really hard not to lose his patience. Maverick wondered when that was going to come. When Ice was going to realize the extent of what Maverick had admitted, when he was going to do what Charlie did and gather his things and walk out the door and out of Maverick’s life forever. “But you’re not.”

Maverick shook his head. “No. I am.”

“Mitchell—”

“Don’t. You’re just — you haven’t — fine, let’s, let’s ignore for a minute the nightmares, the fact that it’s been seven and a half months and I haven’t been able to get him out of my head, the fact that I swear to God I _saw_ Goose for weeks after he died,” Ice’s face went ghost-white, “and how every time I drive by the ocean I think about the hour I floated there waiting for the rescue chopper with Goose’s body in my arms, and — whatever, all of that? Let’s ignore that, and how I can’t handle Charlie being back in my life even after we’ve been broken up for longer than you and me have been together, and how half the time when I go up in the air I swear I still hear Goose talking to me, and…” Maverick pressed his lips together and shook his head again. He let go of his dog tags and dug his fingers into the reddened lines on his palm. “It’s not the grief, Ice. I was fucked up before, and I’m fucked up now. I lost the edge. And now it’s worse and it’s not going away because I’m too fucking pathetic to figure out how to fix it.”

While Maverick was talking, he watched Ice’s face drain of color, all but literally, like he’d been cut open and his veins emptied, leaving him bloodless white under his tan. When Ice finally spoke, his voice was scraped raw in the middle and so soft Maverick almost couldn’t hear him at all. “…Why didn’t you tell me, Mav?”

“Because you…I didn’t…” Maverick couldn’t phrase it right, not even after months of rationalizing it to himself, not when Ice was looking at him like that. The words came out in a mad rush. “You had enough going on, and I didn’t…because you deserve more than this, Ice. More than me. You deserve better than me, I just—”

“Deserve?” Ice said, the word sharp as a knife blade. He was angry all of a sudden; Maverick hadn’t expected that. Not like this. _“Deserve?_ Fuck you — no, shut up. _Shut up.”_ He shoved himself off the counter and got right in Maverick’s face, jabbing a shaking finger into Maverick’s chest. His voice was growing louder with every word. “You don’t get to make this about deserve. You don’t get to put on a show for me for _months_ and claim it’s about what I deserve, Mitchell. Who the fuck do you think you are to tell me what you think I deserve? To make these decisions for me? _Fuck you._ I’m your fucking _wingman._ I am all in with you, Maverick, about everything, I—” He broke off, took a shuddering breath. His next words were shuddering, too. “How could you not know that, Mav?”

Maverick felt like he’d been knifed in the ribs all over again, and when he saw the look on Ice’s face — devastated, heartbroken, all walls down — the blade dug in even further. “Ice,” he tried, but Ice wasn’t done.

“You don’t get to fucking do that to me. You don’t get to turn this into some bullshit about protecting me because you think I deserve better. I don’t give a shit how fucked up or pathetic you think you are. I don’t care about the nightmares, I don’t care about any of it: _I want to be here for you._ I want to know what you’re going through so I can help you get through it. And if you don’t want me to know what you’re going through — if you don’t want me to be here for you — then at least have the balls to tell me that to my fucking face.” He stepped back, raised his chin like he was daring Maverick to punch him again. “Go ahead, Maverick. If you don’t want me to be here for you, then tell me.”

Maverick couldn’t make himself speak. Not just because he wasn’t brave enough, but because he didn’t get it. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. He’d been so sure that Ice wouldn’t want to be with him if he knew how fucked up Maverick really was, but now everything was out in the open and Ice didn’t even look like he cared. Why didn’t it bother him?

 _Why should it?_ whispered a tiny voice in the back of his head. It sounded a little like Goose. _You let him see how you were before you got together. He knew what he was getting into. Why would he want to leave you now?_

“I don’t pretend when it comes to you, Mav,” Ice was saying. The words, quiet and resigned, were like a hundred knives to his chest. “I figured you’d at least have the courtesy to do the same for me.”

Ice turned away, and Maverick grabbed him by the arm. Instinctive, desperate. “I know,” he whispered. The words got caught in his throat on the way out, and he forced them out. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Silence stretched out, engulfing everything around them. Even the clock sounded muted as it struck three. Then Ice turned back to face him. His expression had softened, just a miniscule amount.

Maverick bit his lip. “...Are you going to leave?”

Ice’s eyes met his. “Do you want me to?”

Maverick shook his head.

Panic took him by the throat in a grip tight enough to bruise when Ice extricated his arm from Maverick’s grip and walked toward the doorway, though the pressure loosened considerably when Ice turned back to face him. “Come on,” he said, not unkindly, and Maverick followed.

Maverick was fully prepared to give Ice the bed and take the couch, or Ice could take the couch and Maverick could take the floor, but he stopped in his tracks before he could say so. The lamp was still on, and the window was cracked open, and the bed was made. The bed was made, and clean, with fresh sheets, fresh covers, fresh pillowcases. Even the smell was gone.

“Mav,” Ice said. He was already under the covers, apparently oblivious to the fact that Maverick was biting the inside of his cheek to keep the tears from spilling over for the tenth time in as many minutes. “Come on. Bed.”

Maverick laid down beside Ice and pulled the covers up to his chest methodically. He watched the shadows on the ceiling get swallowed whole by the dark when Ice flicked off the lamp. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ice shift onto his back, even though he usually slept on his side. He usually slept holding Maverick, or with Maverick holding him, but Maverick had a feeling that wasn’t in the cards tonight.

Even though his heart was still in his throat, he made himself reach out and brush his hand against Ice’s. He needed to get back on solid ground — or sky, rather, back on Ice’s wing where he belonged. He needed to know if Ice still wanted him there. He had to know.

Ice nudged Maverick’s hand with his own once, then twice, before retracting it again, leaving an inch of space between them that might as well have been the Ricimero Canyon. He didn’t take Maverick’s hand, didn’t bring it up to his mouth and kiss it, but that was okay. Ice didn’t hate him. Ice was still here.

The question of how long that would last kept Maverick awake for the rest of the night.

* * *

It was quiet, Monday morning. There was no good morning kiss from Ice, no joking offer from Maverick to ditch class and spend the day in bed together. They showered separately, got dressed separately, barely spoke, and when Ice made breakfast, he ate up at the counter while Maverick sat at the kitchen table and did his best to drink his coffee around the lump in his throat. The empty water glass from earlier was still there; neither of them moved to put it in the sink.

Maverick thought that Ice was going to ignore last night like it had never happened — which he had no idea how to feel about — until he took Maverick’s arm, stopping Maverick a second before he walked out the door. “We’re going to talk more about this,” he said. The reddish mark on Ice’s chin from Maverick’s accidental punch had darkened into a purplish bruise. “Tonight. Okay?”

Maverick nodded. It wasn’t like he had a choice.

“Good,” Ice said, and he leaned in and kissed Maverick on the cheek. Brief, soft. “I’ll see you at work.”

He managed a smile. His face muscles felt oddly stiff. “See you there.”

* * *

Maverick had the kids that morning for class, even if he was too tired and distracted to really care what he was telling them. Since he didn’t have to be anywhere until after one, when he and Jester would take the kids up for the afternoon hop, he returned to his office, locked the door behind him, and sank into his chair with his head in his hands. 

Ice wanted to talk to him more. He wanted them to discuss what had happened last night together. What was he expecting to happen? Maverick had said everything he’d wanted to say last night — everything he was willing to say, anyway — and he wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance to go into details about his nightmares again. Or maybe Ice had changed his mind and decided that Maverick wasn’t worth the trouble, and just wanted to let him down easy.

No. No, Ice wouldn’t do that. If he wanted to break up, he would have said so last night, and he wouldn’t have stayed. And if he wanted to talk, then Maverick would talk. Anything to keep Ice with him.

His eyes were hot with exhaustion, and he rubbed at them absentmindedly. There was a stack of tests in front of him that needed to be graded, and a messy pile of flight record printouts that he needed to look over before the weekly staff meeting tomorrow. He pulled one of the tests toward him and stared at it without taking anything in; it was Jinx’s, she usually did good on these. Just like Ice.

_4\. Based on the scenario outlined in the above diagram, which of the following is the most appropriate response?_

_a) Immelmann turn_

_b) Chandelle_

_c) Split-S_

_d) Defensive spiral_

_e) None of the above_

She’d circled C, the correct answer. He remembered watching them all take this test; Hawk chewing on his pen cap, Taz twirling the chain of his dog tags around his finger until the skin went purple, Ax writing quickly and surely, Jinx taking her time. He remembered looking impatiently at his watch, because he was supposed to have lunch with Ice before they went on the afternoon hop together, remembered the warmth he’d felt at Ice’s laugh as they walked to the tarmac together…Ice had bet on Ax and Hawk winning, and Maverick on Jinx and Taz, but to his and Ice’s surprise, Tank and Twain (one of the quieter, more mediocre duos) had won, their first and only win in the session so far.

“Jinx looks pissed,” Ice had said mildly, on their way back to the locker room. “Shouldn’t have hesitated when she was about to get a lock on you.”

Maverick grinned. “You didn’t have to go that hard on the kill, you know. I would’ve pissed myself if you came at me like that straight out of the valley.”

“Pretty sure Ax did piss himself when you got him first,” Ice said, grinning back. “What was it you said? ‘Gotta keep your eyes and ears open at all times, kids?’ Couldn’t think of anything more arrogant to say, Mitchell?”

“Not arrogant if it’s true,” Maverick said cheerfully, and Ice rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I hear some people find arrogance sexy. Apparently it makes you — what’s the word? — more virile.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Come and find out,” Maverick dared, and Ice had wasted no time in shoving him up against the wall in the empty CLR and showing him with his hands and mouth exactly what he thought about the idea of Maverick’s arrogance being a turn-on… 

Maverick’s eyes snapped open.

The world was a sideways blur, and he lifted his head slowly, bringing a piece of paper up with him. Jinx’s test paper, the ink slightly smudged. Fuck. _Fuck,_ had he—

He checked his watch and almost tipped backwards out of his chair, catching himself on the edge of the desk. How the fuck could it be ten to one already? He’d slept through the entire morning, through lunch — Ice hadn’t even come by, why hadn’t he — and the _hop,_ god damn it, the afternoon hop, fuck fuck _fuck—_

Maverick sprang up so fast that he actually did knock the chair over this time, and wasted no time in sprinting out of his office. He’d get changed as fast as he could, and then he’d go through the preflight check even faster, and with luck, he’d only be a couple minutes late. He’d lie and say he got caught up in the paperwork; Jester wouldn’t be too mad at him for that. He could do this. Everything would be fine. _God damn it, how did I fall asleep for that long?_

“If you’re looking for Iceman, he’s not there.”

The words made him skid to a sudden halt. Charlie, who’d been walking in the same direction he’d come from, stopped directly in front of him, staring at him expectantly. All Maverick could do was blink. “What’re you talking about?”

“Lieutenant Commander Kazansky. Iceman,” Charlie said, like that was the part of the sentence that Maverick hadn’t understood. “He’s not in the infirmary.”

Dread curled icy fingers around his heart. “What?” He sounded about as shaky and off-kilter as he suddenly felt, like the world was tilting and twisting beneath his feet. If this was Charlie’s idea of a joke, Maverick swore to God he’d kill her. “Why would Ice be in the infirmary?”

Charlie frowned. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

Charlie’s frown grew more pronounced. “There was an accident during the hop this morning,” she said. “Iceman flew through Axis’s jetwash; he had to eject over the ocean. Last I heard he was in pretty bad shape, so they moved him from the infirmary to the hospital.”

Maverick felt like he was floating out of his own body, watching everything from a distance, listening around the high buzzing in his ears. No. Charlie had to be wrong. This had to be a joke, a cruel joke. Another nightmare. This couldn’t be happening.

“...didn’t hear all the details, but apparently it was Axis’s rolling scissors that did it. He was trying to evade, but Iceman was too close behind him.” Charlie shook her head. “And Commander Metcalf was saying Iceman was distracted when he was going over the preflight checklist…”

The tightness in his chest became so pronounced it actually felt like he was choking. Spots danced across his vision and refused to dissipate, even when he forced himself to inhale. Her words had jumbled in his mind, stuck on a random loop that kept getting faster. _Jetwash. Accident. Bad shape. Eject. Distracted. Rolling scissors. Before you get somebody killed out there. God, please no._

“Pete. Are you alright?”

Maverick could feel his hands shaking, but it was like it was all happening from a distance, like he was watching it all happen to somebody else. His heart was beating so hard and fast it felt like it would pop out of his chest and fall to the floor between him and Charlie any moment. “I have to go,” he said abruptly. “I…”

“Pete,” Charlie said again, her brow furrowed, but Maverick was halfway down the hall before he could hear what else she wanted to say to him. He didn’t see or hear anyone else — the lights were off in all of the classrooms and most of the offices. They must have cancelled classes for the day. Just like they did when Goose died.

He shoved open the door to the CLR and stumbled to the line of sinks at the back of the room. His legs were trembling now, like he’d run from one end of the building to the other, and his hands shook so badly that when he splashed cold water on his face a good amount ended up dripping all over his shirt. He could feel his veins buzzing underneath his skin, like they were full of insects instead of blood, and he wanted to walk around the room, to run his hands through his hair, anything so his mind would shut up for just a second, but he couldn’t do anything but bend over the sink, his stomach churning, his vision kaleidoscopic with spots, trying to gulp down air.

He couldn’t breathe. It was too hot in here, his palms were slick with sweat and he couldn’t keep himself balanced and he couldn’t breathe. He wondered if Ice was breathing when he had to eject. Was he still breathing when the rescue chopper picked him up? When they moved him from the infirmary to the hospital? _Bad shape._ He was in bad shape. Ice was in bad shape, but Ice couldn’t be in bad shape. He was Top Gun, he was the best of the best, he couldn’t have let this happen — God, how the _fuck_ did this happen—

_Iceman was distracted when he was going over the preflight checklist..._

The realization sank in like ice water leaking into a dark, bitter cavern. Distracted. Distracted because of Maverick. Because of their fight, because of Maverick’s nightmares, because Maverick had been putting on a show for him for the entire time they were together and before that too. And Ice wasn’t breathing now, was he? Bad shape. He was in bad shape. Did people breathe in bad shape? Goose hadn’t. Goose didn’t breathe anymore because Maverick fucked up and killed him and now Ice was in bad shape and in the hospital and not the infirmary because he’d been distracted because of Maverick and Maverick hadn’t been there for him, not in the air, not on the ground, oh God, oh fuck, _Ice—_

His legs gave out from under him, and he pressed his forehead to the cool tiles, his knees tucked up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his roiling stomach. His breaths were coming hard and heavy, he couldn’t get enough air, God, it was so fucking hot in here. It was hot outside too today, he hadn’t even needed a jacket when he rode to work. It was probably hotter out on the ocean, the sun beating down on the waves, on the people floating in the ocean, on Ice, injured, hurt, bleeding, not breathing, just like Goose, god, god, god, just like Goose, except Ice was alone, he’d been alone. He was Ice’s wingman and he’d left Ice alone out there, how could he — _you never, never leave your wingman._

It was his fault. His fault Ice had been distracted, his fault Ice was in bad shape now, his fault about everything. To think he’d spent so long worrying about Ice leaving him like Charlie had, but now Ice was going to leave him just like Goose had and it was his fault both times. His fault. He moaned like the sound had been punched out of him, in between his increasingly shaky and sporadic breaths. God. His fault. All his fault.

He couldn’t breathe from the pain of it, from the crackling heat of the pain spreading through him. He was on fire, a comet hurtling toward the earth just like Ice’s plane had probably been hurtling into the sea. There was smoke in his lungs, smoke from the plane. He needed to put out the smoke. Water put out smoke, he needed water, he needed to breathe.

He dragged himself forward into the closest stall and reached up to turn the handle all the way to the highest setting before collapsing back to his knees, curling under the spray and moaning, his eyes squeezed shut. It was hot and dark, too dark; everything was slippery and too loud and he couldn’t get a grip on anything, he was falling, he was sinking. Just like Ice in his dreams, just like Goose, only this time he was Goose and Ice all at once, sinking down, down, down, through miles and miles of black ocean, his body weighed down with rocks.

Acid burned his throat like bile and he bent over again, shaking all over and choking for air. Water was filling his mouth now. _No._ He had to wake up. He always woke up when this happened, but now there was nobody to wake up next to, nobody to offer help that he was too much of a coward to take. He was alone and drowning on dry land and he deserved it, it was his fault and Goose was dead and Ice was gone and it was his fault and he deserved it, his fault his fault his fault—

“—want you to breathe with me now, alright? Just breathe. In, hold it — good, now let it go. Good. You’re doing good. Let’s do it again.”

He felt himself being pulled upward through the dark water.

“You’re okay. You’re safe. Just keep breathing, in and out, in and out. Good. You’re gonna get through this. Just keep breathing. Concentrate on that, one breath at a time, okay? Just one breath at a time.”

Maverick broke the surface and gasped. 

“It’s alright,” said the voice, calm and steady and familiar. “It’s alright, Maverick. You’re alright.”

“Goose?” he choked out, but even as the name left his lips he knew it couldn’t be right. His head was spinning, his stomach lurching. Cold. He was so damn cold, like his heart was pumping ice water through his veins with every too-fast thumping beat.

“Just keep breathing,” the voice said. “Focus on your surroundings. Tell me what you can feel.”

“Water. The water. S’cold.”

“Good. I turned off the spray a little while ago. You’re wet now, but you’ll be dry soon. Take another breath. What else can you feel?”

“I…” His muscles were aching, and he slowly unclenched his fists, pressing his palms on the ground. His mouth tasted like stale bile and his hair was plastered to his forehead, his uniform soaked through enough that he can feel the clammy-cold chill working its way into him. An ache was thrumming through his bones like a second pulse, but he tried to concentrate on the question. “I…the floor. The tiles.”

“Good. Do you remember when we redid the floors in here last month? You said you liked the new color better.”

“S’better now.” His stomach was unclenching now too, leaving a thin, trembling ache behind. He took another breath, let it out as slowly as he could, just like the voice told him to. “I like the white.”

“Me too. Always thought the yellow was too much. Didn’t match anything else in here.” A brief pause. “Do you think you can sit up now?”

Maverick didn’t want to, but he nodded. Slowly, he pushed himself up on shaking arms and leaned against the wall, his head tipped back. He wanted to draw his knees up to his chest again, but his joints felt so stiff that he decided moving his legs wasn’t worth the effort. 

Viper was crouched in front of him, his expression inscrutable. If he noticed that his right sleeve and the knees of his pants were soaked through, he didn’t comment on it. “How do you feel?”

“Little better,” Maverick managed. “Sir, I…” He could feel a hot flush working its way up the back of his neck, across his face. His stomach seemed thrilled to have something new to twist about. “I’m so sorry, sir. I-I don’t know what happened, I’m—”

Viper held up his hand. “Don’t,” he said, quiet but firm. “Not my first rodeo, Lieutenant Commander.” While Maverick wondered exactly what that meant, Viper said, “I assume you heard about what occurred this morning.”

He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood to keep the hot rush of tears back. “Yes sir.”

Viper was tilting his head, studying him in that frowning way he had. “He’ll be alright, you know,” he finally said. “Iceman.”

Maverick almost fainted. “He…” The word was a barely-there croak, and he leaned forward, desperate and terrified all over again. If Viper was lying, if Viper was somehow wrong… “But I heard, Charlie said Ice was…”

“He was in bad shape,” Viper said calmly. “I know. That’s why we had to move him to the hospital. I just came back from there; the doctors say he has some fractured ribs, a broken wrist, some pretty bad sunburn. We’ll have to ground him for the remainder of the session, unfortunately, and they want to keep him overnight for observation, but they’re sure he’s going to make a full recovery.”

Tears spilled down his cheeks, unbidden, and he quickly ducked his head and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, resting his elbows on his trembling knees. All of the nervous buzzing energy from before had drained out of him, leaving him empty, wrung-out; exhausted all the way down to his bones. And relieved. So fucking relieved, he was damn near giddy with it. Ice was okay. He was going to be okay. _Thank God._

When he finally got himself composed enough to look back up, Viper was still staring at him with his head slightly tilted, but the look in his eyes was quizzical, not concerned. Maverick opened his mouth to say something — he didn’t know what, but he’d find it along the way — but Viper shook his head and the look disappeared. “Come on,” he said, businesslike, and clapped Maverick on the shoulder. “I’ll take you to see him.”

* * *

The waiting room was crowded with people, and Viper patted him on the shoulder before he went off to ask for more information on Ice. Maverick didn’t know if he was supposed to sit down or just stick around and wait for Viper, but the sound of familiar voices drew him towards the group of people sitting in the corner.

“It’s all my fault,” Ax was saying to Hawk, who immediately shook his head. “I’ll probably get a DD for this. Or court-martialled. Or just kicked out of the program if I’m lucky.”

“You won’t get kicked out,” Hawk said. “It was an accident, Ax, that’s all.”

“That’s not the point, Hawk. I could’ve gotten Commander Kazansky killed all because I was so fucking focused on…on the competition.”

“On beating me, you mean,” Jinx said mildly, though her gaze was cold. Taz, who was sitting right between her and Ax, picked up a magazine and startled riffling through it like he’d never seen anything as interesting. Hawk developed a sudden fascination with the engraving on his dog tags. “Like you have been this entire time.”

Ax looked offended. “You’ve been just as focused on winning as I am!”

“I’m not the one who put our teacher in the hospital because of it,” she snapped, but even as she said it, it was clear from Ax’s expression and Taz’s low hiss of _Jenny_ that she’d gone too far, and she knew it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“No,” Ax said. “You’re right. I took it too far. I’ve been taking it too far this whole time.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I’ve been an ass to you, Rubin.”

“I won’t deny that,” Jinx said. Then, almost reluctantly, “And…I won’t deny that I’ve been an ass to you too.”

“I deserved it,” Ax said. He stuck out his hand. “Like Viper says, we’re all on the same team out there. I think it’s time I started acting like it.”

Jinx’s gaze flickered between Ax and his hand, and finally, she took it. “Me too,” she said. A small smile curved her mouth. “But we’re still gonna give you two a run for your money for the plaque.”

Ax grinned. “I wouldn’t expect any less of you.”

Maverick didn’t mean to interrupt whatever was going on, but Hawk said loudly, “Commander Mitchell!” and half the waiting room turned in their chairs to look at him. Jinx dropped Ax’s hand like a hot potato and jumped to her feet, and Taz and Ax, who looked a little disappointed by the loss of contact, were only a second behind her.

“Sir,” Taz said, coming to attention, his hands behind his back. “Are you here to see Commander Kazansky, sir?”

 _No shit, Lieutenant,_ Maverick was tempted to say, but instead he nodded. “That’s right.” He could see Jinx looking at him curiously, and fought back a blush. He’d caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the way out of the CLR, and even in dry clothes, he looked like a drowned cat somebody had fished out of the gutter. “You been in to see him yet?”

“No sir,” Ax said. “Doc said no visitors until they move him to a separate room.”

“Which is right about now,” Viper said lightly, and the kids all just about jumped out of their skins. Jinx was standing so straight that she looked like she’d thrown out her back. “Maverick. Let’s go.”

“Yes sir.”

“Wait,” Ax said hurriedly, and Maverick blinked as the younger man thrust a large bouquet of yellow carnations into Maverick’s arms. “For Commander Kazansky, sir,” he said. “From me and Hawk. I dunno when we’re gonna get a chance to see him, but, uh, could you tell him I’m sorry for this morning? That I didn’t—”

“Yeah,” Maverick said. “Yeah, I’ll tell him.”

Ax grinned at him, relieved, and Maverick set off beside Viper down the hall, gripping the flowers tightly. He hated hospitals. He spent an entire year in one watching his mother wither away and die of cancer, and woke up in one alone after Goose died. And now Ice was in the hospital all because of Maverick, with fractured ribs and a broken wrist and bad sunburn and who the hell knew what else. Even Viper didn’t really know how bad. What if he was hurt more than Viper had said? He felt nausea roll hot in the pit of his stomach, had to press the back of his free hand against his mouth and breathe sharp through his nose. He could feel Viper staring at him, his eyebrows arched in silent question, and Maverick just waved him off. 

Finally, Viper stopped in front of a closed door at the end of the hall. “He’s in here,” he said. “Ten minutes to visit. I’m going to grab a coffee, you want anything?”

“No thank you, sir,” Maverick managed, and Viper nodded at him before heading back down the hall. With trembling hands and a tight throat, he pushed open the door and let it shut behind him.

Ice was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows. He was naked from the waist up, cuts and mottled bruises on his chest. His left arm was in a sling, a neatly-wrapped cast poking out of it, and he was pressing an ice pack to his abdomen with his free hand. His face and parts of his neck were shiny-red with sunburn; his hair lay flat for the first time Maverick could remember. He looked tired, the lines of his face drawn tight, but when his eyes flicked up to meet Maverick’s, a tiny, wry smile tugged at his mouth. “Hey,” he rasped. “Those for me?”

Maverick burst into tears.

“Mav,” Ice said, “no, Mav, don’t,” but Maverick didn’t listen; he crossed the room in about two steps and a heartbeat later he was at Ice’s side, bracing one knee on the mattress as he wrapped his arms around Ice’s shoulders as gently as he could manage. He felt Ice’s free hand coming up to grip the back of Maverick’s neck, felt the sobs making him vibrate all the way from the top of his head to the curve of his spine.

“I’m so sorry, Ice. I’m sorry for not telling you about the nightmares, I’m sorry I distracted you this morning, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, God, Jesus Ice, I—”

“It’s okay. It’s okay, I know.”

“No, no, you don’t, you — fuck, Ice, you know I love you, right? You know that, right? You know that I — that I love you, I love you _so fucking much,_ God Ice I’m so sorry, I should’ve told you, I should’ve—”

“Mav. Mav, it’s okay. I’m okay. Look at me.”

Sniffling, Maverick drew back, just enough that he could see Ice and still be in his arms at the same time. Ice touched Maverick’s cheek, his hand grazing Maverick’s jaw, and Maverick drank in the sight of him. Bruised, scarred, but still alive. Still alive. Still here, with him.

“They’re from Ax and Hawk,” Maverick finally said, like the last few minutes hadn’t happened. “The flowers.” The bouquet in question had fallen to the ground in Maverick’s haste to close the distance between them, and he broke away to pick them up and put them on one of the empty plastic chairs beside Ice’s bed. Maybe one of the nurses would find somewhere to put them later. He took the other chair and slid it as close to Ice’s bed as he could manage. “He says he’s sorry for this morning. I think maybe he and Hawk are gunning for some extra credit.”

Ice’s laugh was slow, hoarse. “They’re gonna have to work a bit harder than that,” he said, and his voice was slow too, a low drawl. Maverick wondered how strong the painkillers that he was on were. Hoped that he wasn’t in any pain. Hoped just a little that he hadn’t registered what Maverick had said in the middle of all those apologies: not because he didn’t mean what he said, but because he wanted Ice to hear him say it for the first time in a much more romantic setting than a room that stank of antiseptic. Ice liked romantic shit like that, and Maverick wanted to sweep him off his feet every once in a while.

“How, uh, how’re you feeling?”

“Sore. Tired.” He grinned, showing his teeth. “High. Don’t tell anybody.”

Maverick fought the urge to laugh. “Sure thing.”

“Don’t worry, though,” Ice said. “Not going anywhere. Promised Goose.”

Maverick felt like he’d just been punched in the throat. “What?”

Ice’s eyes seemed to be an even paler blue than usual; for a moment, his gaze shifted to the spot just behind Maverick with such intensity that he felt a shiver go up his spine, wanting to turn around and see whatever it was the drugs were making Ice see. Then Ice looked back at him and said, “He was with me, Mav. In the air.”

“He was…” Maverick’s tongue felt too big for his mouth. “Who was?”

“Goose,” Ice said. Still that same slow, gravelly voice, the gaze that wasn’t as focused as usual. Maverick couldn’t take his eyes off him. “He was with me when I had to eject. And in the ocean too, when I was waiting for the rescue chopper.” He gave a breathy laugh. “Said he owed me one, so he stayed.”

Goose. It seemed like he was everywhere today. Dying in Maverick’s nightmares. In Ice’s head as his plane was plummeting towards the ocean. Flickering in the look Viper had given him after he helped Maverick out of the shower stall, carefully sat him down on the bench and handed him a change of clothes. Maverick missed him so badly it hurt.

“Well,” he said, hoping he sounded more casual than he felt. “I’m glad he was there for you when you needed him.” _He was always good at that._ “And that — that you’re here. That you’re okay.”

“Promised him I’d look after you,” Ice said, as easy as breathing, and patted Maverick on the hand. Maverick felt his lungs constrict until something hot burst free up behind his eyes, his ribcage, his throat; internal bleeding of a different kind. “I’m not going anywhere.”

In response, Maverick leaned forward in his chair and rested his forehead against Ice’s shoulder, pressing a kiss there. Ice moved his free hand up to touch Maverick’s hair, maybe, or just to push him off, but Maverick caught Ice’s wrist between his fingers, held Ice’s hand and turned his face into it. The tip of his nose skimmed across the worn, familiar lines there, the calluses, and then he pressed his mouth into the center of Ice’s palm, once, and then again. Kissed away the sweat and the salt on each of his fingertips before looking up again, not letting go. Ice had his eyes closed, and a faint blush painted on his cheeks. Maverick set Ice’s hand back on his stomach so it was holding the ice pack loosely, and buried his face against Ice’s shoulder again, wrapping his arms around Ice’s forearm.

 _Thank you,_ he thought, though to who or what he wasn’t sure. For a moment, he swore he felt a strange breeze against the back of his neck, a soothing, barely-there touch, and a wet warmth spilled from the corners of his eyes. _Thank you._

“Mav.”

“Hm.”

“M’sorry.”

“What?” Maverick raised his head, alarmed. “For what?”

“Not gonna be able to be your wingman in the air for a while.” With a wince, Ice gestured vaguely at himself with the hand that was in a cast. “Sorry, baby.”

A noise wobbled out of him that might have been a laugh or a sob. “That’s okay.” He reached over and clumsily took Ice’s free hand again, ignoring the cold of the ice pack. “You can still be mine on the ground.”

Ice smiled. “Okay.”

Maverick lifted a hand to cup Ice’s jaw, careful of the bruise there, and their lips had barely touched when a knock came at the door. Seconds later, the door swung open, and Maverick pulled back at once. Viper surveyed them with raised eyebrows, and Maverick quickly dropped Ice’s hand like he’d been electrocuted. Not that it mattered. From the way Ice was pouting — actually pouting, Jesus Christ, these painkillers were something else — it was clear enough what they’d been doing.

Viper acted like he didn’t even notice. “Gentlemen,” he said instead by way of greeting, and handed Maverick a plastic-wrapped muffin. “How’re you feeling, Kazansky?”

“Better, sir,” Ice said. The faint blush deepened to a dark pink. “Thanks.”

Viper nodded. Before he could say anything else, Ice’s doctor swept into the room like she owned the place. “Lieutenant Commander Kazansky,” she said, and gave Viper and Maverick polite smiles. “Your sister just phoned, she says she’s on the next flight here. We still haven’t been able to reach your parents, though...”

“They’re on a cruise,” Ice said. “Left yesterday. They’ll be back in a couple weeks.”

The doctor nodded. “We’re ready to take you in for your MRI and CT scans now,” she said, “and then we’ll get you settled with another ice pack and some breathing exercises.” To Maverick and Viper, she said, “The tests will take about an hour, but you’re welcome to stick around until then. Visiting hours don’t end until six.”

“I think I’ll head home,” Viper said easily. “I’ll drop by again in the morning — Mitchell?” Maverick opened his mouth to say that he’d rather stick around, actually, but Viper said in an undertone, “If you come along, I’ll drop you off at TOPGUN so you can pick up your bike.”

Oh. “Sure,” Maverick said. Maybe he could stop by Ice’s and grab something on his way back. A blanket, or a sweatshirt, or one of the books Ice was reading a couple days ago. “Thank you, sir.” He stood up and put a hand on Ice’s shoulder, just for a second. He didn’t want to do anything more, not with Viper and Ice’s doctor in the room. “I’ll see you later, alright?”

Ice’s mouth quirked. “You can count on it.”

* * *

Ice was in the hospital for a couple more days after that, during which Maverick’s visits were consistently interrupted by Ice’s doctor, or the other instructors, or the kids, or Captain Taylor Kazansky, who, in the first five minutes of her arrival, hugged Ice and kissed him all over his face before smacking him gently upside the head and berating him for worrying her so much, _damn it, Tommy, you scared me half to death._ She stuck around for a few days after the hospital released Ice, helping Ice through the breathing exercises and keeping him supplied with ice packs while Maverick was at work, and flew back to Louisiana that Sunday. “Take care of him,” she’d told Maverick after hugging him goodbye, and Maverick promised he would. Like there was a chance in hell he wouldn’t.

The end of the session came at last, only not with the bang that Maverick had expected. Ax and Jinx’s rivalry continued all the way to the end, but they weren’t as ruthless when they flew against each other anymore. And at graduation, when Viper presented the plaque to Lieutenant Jennifer Alice “Jinx” Rubin and Lieutenant Junior Grade James Henry “Taz” Tassey, Ax’s applause and grin actually looked genuine. Thank fuck for that.

Ice left halfway through the graduation luncheon to go to a doctor’s appointment, so Maverick spent the day alternating between watching Jinx cradle the plaque in her arms like it was her firstborn and half-listening to Sunshine lament how much money he lost in the betting pool. Apparently Jester won the pot this time, so he’d be buying the first round of drinks for the instructors at the O Club tonight. Not that Maverick wanted to go. He’d had enough social interaction for one day.

The kids and their families finally cleared out around four, and Maverick headed to the parking lot, relieved. He was glad to see this batch go; any longer with them and he probably would’ve gone gray. 

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Maverick didn’t drop his keys on the asphalt from shock, but it was a near thing. “Uh, my bike’s here,” he said, gesturing at the bike in question vaguely. “So…”

The corner of Charlie’s mouth quirked up. “I’m aware,” she said. Her hair was up in a bun now, and she was wearing her leather jacket, and carrying two briefcases. “I was hoping to see you before I left.”

Right. She was leaving. The five weeks were up. Maverick struggled to find a word for what he was feeling and came up empty. Then the rest of what she’d said registered, and he frowned. “Why?”

After all, aside from their fight in the hall that one time and when she’d told him about the accident, they’d barely spoken to each other throughout the session, and he kind of wanted to keep it that way. He figured Charlie would want to keep it that way too, but she just shrugged and moved closer. “I leave for DC in the morning.”

“Okay,” Maverick said, really, really hoping this wasn’t going to go where he thought it was going to go.

“I don’t know if we’ll see each other again,” Charlie continued. Her firm use of if and not when made him feel a little surer of where things stood between them. “But I wanted to say…I’m sorry for the way we left things last time.”

Maverick blinked. “For the way we left things,” he repeated. Not for what she’d said, or how she’d acted. But for how _they’d_ left things — well, he guessed that encompassed everything she was too proud to say, or maybe didn’t know how to. Still. It was something. 

“Yes,” Charlie said. “And…well.” She studied him with that same look Viper liked, tilted head and slight frown and all. Maverick felt the back of his neck prickle. “I’m glad that you seem to be in a better place now. Whatever the reason.”

Maverick’s mouth opened, closed. The first part had been unexpected enough, but the last bit really threw him for a loop. What did that mean, whatever the reason? What did Charlie know about him that he didn’t? “Thanks,” he finally said. “And…I’m glad you’re happy now too.”

Charlie smiled a little. “Thank you,” she said, and turned to go. She glanced back at him just before she got into her car, still smiling. “So long, Pete Mitchell.”

He watched her go, didn’t say goodbye back. He still wasn’t sure what Charlie had meant by that last statement of hers, but it didn’t matter. They’d gotten through the session without killing each other, and she was gone. And he felt…lighter. Freer. Like he was floating down from the sky instead of free-falling.

Not better, he thought, straddling his bike. But in a better place.

He’d take that.

* * *

Maverick stopped by the Thai place Ice liked to order takeout, and then to the flower shop, just because he could. While he waited for the order to be finished, he absentmindedly folded some of the takeout menus into paper airplanes, and then dropped them into the plastic bouquet wrap. He’d take them out later. Or maybe he’d keep them. They looked nice on top of the lilies.

By the time he finally got to Ice’s house, there was a car in the driveway that he didn’t recognize. He stared at it dumbly for a few seconds, wondering if Ice had gotten a new car and hadn’t told him — not that Ice would ever trade in his Mazda for a rental Toyota, not even at gunpoint — and then it hit him. A rental Toyota. So this car was someone else’s. And he had a pretty good idea whose it was.

The door was open. He took the bouquet and takeout bag out of the compartment and let himself in.

“How’re you feelin’,” somebody was saying, and Maverick froze in the foyer, not even shutting the door behind him. Carefully, he inched forward until he could see into the living room, but the people in there couldn’t see him. Ice was sitting on the couch, dressed in sweatpants and a wifebeater with an ice pack pressed to his stomach, and another man was standing in front of him, practically at attention. A familiar man, even from the back. Cougar. “Broken ribs are a bitch. I broke one back when I was sixteen.”

“I remember,” Ice said. He sounded tired. “You told me.”

“Right,” Cougar said. “So, uh. Are they gonna clear you to fly soon? Being grounded must be a pain in the ass; I remember this one time Merlin and I—”

“Bill,” Ice said, and Cougar shut up. “Either get to the point or get out, alright? You better not have spent the last two weeks combing through the White Pages just to come here and make small talk with me.”

“I didn’t use the White Pages,” Cougar said, like that was the most important part of what Ice had said. “Well, I tried, but I ended up diallin’ 411 and they gave — it doesn’t matter. Anyway, you were the one who called me first.”

“I was drunk. I didn’t — I didn’t know what I wanted from you. If I even wanted anything from you.”

“I think you did want somethin’ from me,” Cougar said quietly. “I think maybe you wanted the same thing from me that I wanted from you.”

“Yeah?” Ice said. He wasn’t looking at Cougar. Maverick didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. “What’s that?”

“Somethin’ that I should’ve told you a long way back.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do, Tom,” Cougar said, somehow patronizing and pleading at the same time. “I love you.”

Maverick’s heart plummeted to his kidneys, and he had to lock his knees together to keep himself from falling down when he saw Ice’s stunned expression. A terrified ache began to form in his chest the longer Ice stayed silent, twisting his lungs, filling his throat with cottony dread. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t make himself move.

Then Ice scoffed. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“It should,” Cougar said, clearly taken aback. “I mean — Jesus, did you even hear what I said? I just told you that I _love_ you, Tom. Fuck, look, I’m sorry for not getting it back when we were at Pensacola, but I get it now. I get how you felt about me. And I love you too.”

“You get it now,” Ice repeated. “After you left the Navy and your wife left you.”

“Does it matter when I got it?” Cougar retorted. “The point is I got it, alright? No, the point is I love you, and I was a damn fool not to figure it out sooner, and I know you still love me, so—”

“No, I don’t,” Ice cut in. Relief hit Maverick so hard he almost dropped the bags on the floor. “Not anymore.”

“What?” Cougar’s jaw dropped, but he pulled himself back together quickly, trying to hide his shock with a laugh. “Come on. Don’t lie to me, Kazansky. I know you were in love with me back at Pensacola. You weren’t exactly good at hidin’ it.”

“I was in love with you then,” Ice said evenly, his glare scorching even as the temperature of his words dipped below zero. “I won’t deny that. But I don’t love you now. I’ve had four years to get over you and move on, and I have.” He got to his feet, and even though Cougar was taller than Maverick, Ice still loomed over him. “What were you expecting, Bill? That you’d show up and I’d drop everything just because you said you wanted to be with me again? After you told me what we had was supposed to be casual and didn’t mean anything and you never apologized for leading me on, you seriously expect me to believe that you love me?”

Cougar was silent. That seemed to be answer enough.

“Maybe you think you love me,” Ice said. “Maybe you’re more in love with the idea that there might be someone out there who loves you without you having to do anything in return. It doesn’t matter. I don’t love you, and I’m not going to be your rebound until you get bored or scared again.” His voice hardened. “Now get the hell out of my house.”

All of the fight left Cougar like air from a deflating tire, and before Maverick could do anything, Cougar turned on his heel and walked out of the living room — stopping abruptly in his tracks when he saw Maverick standing in the foyer.

Their eyes met, and for a second, Maverick saw a flicker of recognition, then comprehension, followed by something like envy. Maybe even regret. Then it was all gone, and Cougar gave him a brief nod of acknowledgement before he stepped around Maverick to the front door, letting it slam shut behind him. 

Ice was sitting down again when Maverick walked into the living room, and he lifted his head out of his hands when Maverick sat beside him on the couch, set the bags on the floor, and nudged his knee. “Hey,” he said. “I brought dinner. And these.”

Ice smiled at the bouquet, small and sidelong, like he didn’t want Maverick to see. His fingers traced the petals. “I didn’t know flowers came with paper airplanes these days.”

“Sure they do,” Maverick said, smiling a little himself. “These are F-14 Lilies. Best in the fleet.”

Ice snorted. “Right,” he said seriously, and nudged Maverick back. “Thanks, Mav.” He set the bouquet next to him and slid the ice pack back under his shirt. “So,” he said. “How much did you hear?”

“Just the tail end of it,” Maverick admitted. “Are you...did it help? Talking to him?”

Ice let out a slow breath. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I think it did.”

“Good.” Maverick meant it, too. He leaned back against the couch and snagged one of the paper airplanes on Ice’s lap, playing with the edge of its wing. “How was your doctor’s appointment?”

“Nothing new. Just told me to take it easy and keep taking ibuprofen.” Ice shrugged. “Anything exciting happen at the graduation luncheon?”

“Eh. Not really.” Maverick dropped his gaze to the plane in his hands. “Charlie and I talked.”

He could feel Ice looking at him. “What’d she say to you?”

“That she’s sorry for the way we left things last time.” Maverick’s laugh wasn’t all that forced. “And then she left. Probably for good this time.”

Ice was quiet for a while, long enough for Maverick to unfold the paper airplane and refold it again. Then, the words as careful and precise as if he were wading through a minefield, he said, “How did you two leave things last time?”

Maverick didn’t want to tell him. He wanted to change the subject, or just stay quiet until Ice said something else first. But then he remembered how determined and desperate Ice had looked when he’d said, _I want to know, Maverick. Tell me. Talk to me,_ and, well. Fuck. Ice already knew some of the details, and he knew about his nightmares too, and he was still here. Maybe telling him the rest of this story wouldn’t hurt.

“When Goose died,” Maverick started, and then cut himself off, blinking rapidly until the pressure behind his eyes receded. Maybe someday he’d be able to talk about that day without going to pieces, but not now. Not anytime soon. “I was a fucking mess. You saw me. Nothing anybody said helped, so I figured…I figured I’d just get better with time. That’s what they all say, right? Only thing that helps is time.”

Ice didn’t say anything. Didn’t nod. But he didn’t leave, and Maverick counted that as a victory.

“Charlie and I broke it off when I quit. But when I came back here, before she left for Washington, we decided to try again. I was feeling better. I thought I pulled myself together. But we…I started seeing Goose everywhere, and my nightmares started getting worse. One night I woke her up because I was talking in my sleep and moving around too much and I had to tell her why, and…it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I guess. She said it was pathetic that I hadn’t moved on yet—”

“You’re not pathetic,” Ice cut in. Maverick could hear the undercurrent of anger in the words. “She shouldn’t have said that to you.”

“I know,” Maverick said, and it made something loosen in him. Maybe someday he’d believe it all the way down. “The point is she couldn’t handle it — she didn’t want to handle it. And…she left me.”

Quiet edged by like a wave crashing onto the sand, over and over. “I’m not Charlie.”

Maverick shook his head — not because he disagreed, but because he knew it was true.

Ice wrapped an arm over Maverick’s shoulders with a barely-there wince and pressed a kiss to his hairline. Maverick leaned into the touch. “I’m not Charlie,” he said again, quieter. Then, even quieter, like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud, “And I’m not going to leave you anytime soon.”

Maverick felt drained, empty, in that same free and floating way he’d felt in the parking lot a couple hours ago. It made him smile. “Even if I throw up in bed again?”

Ice made a noncommittal noise. “Eh,” he said. “As long as you change the sheets after, I’m good.”

“Or you can do it and I’ll make it up to you later.”

“Yeah? By doing what?”

“I’ll woo you,” Maverick said, like it was obvious. “Romance you. Give you a night you’ll never forget.”

Ice rolled his eyes. “You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, Mitchell.”

“Well,” Maverick said, unable to resist. He smirked and leaned in so close that their noses were practically touching, enjoying how Ice’s eyes went dark and flickered down to his lips. “I’ve got _one.”_

“Funny,” Ice murmured. “I thought you were all mouth.”

“You like my mouth.”

As if to prove it, Ice rolled his eyes again and kissed him. It was pretty chaste, as far as their kisses went, but Maverick still put up his hand to cup Ice’s jaw, just to prove to himself that Ice was still there. “Yeah,” he said, smiling with every part of his face. “I like your mouth, Mitchell.”

“God help you,” Maverick said lightly, because if he didn’t, he’d end up saying something stupid like, _I like your mouth too,_ or _I like your hair, I like your eyes, I like your whole face,_ or _I_ _like you so fucking much it drives me crazy._ Ice laughed, but his eyes twinkled like he knew what exactly Maverick meant. Like he liked all of Maverick too, every part of him, even the fucked up parts that didn’t deserve it. For whatever reason, Ice just didn’t seem to get that Maverick wasn’t worth staying with.

Ice kissed him again, pushing him back all the way down to the cushions, and Maverick vowed not to be the one to tell him.

* * *

_epilogue:_

Maverick woke up.

For a moment, he felt his heartbeat quicken — there was water all around him, he could feel it, he could hear pounding in his ears like thunder — but it turned out to be the gentle drumming of rain on the roof, not the endless roar of the sea. He was in bed, tangled in a sweaty cocoon of blankets, and he turned onto his side, toying with the chain of his dog tags. In his dream, Goose’s parachute had tangled around them both, and they’d sank together.

He shook his head, trying to clear the images from his brain like an Etch-A-Sketch. When that didn’t work, he shifted further to the left, dropping his head unceremoniously on the edge of Ice’s pillow.

“Mm.” Ice turned over, his breath rustling Maverick’s hair. He shifted back a little so they could share the pillow more equally, and put his hand on Maverick’s hip, absentmindedly stroking the skin with his thumb. “Nightmare?”

Maverick nodded, even though Ice’s eyes were shut.

“C’mere.” Maverick cuddled closer, pushing his knee between Ice’s, and Ice wrapped his free arm around his waist, holding Maverick close. He was warm; Maverick felt like he was melting into him. Like they were melting into each other. Ice’s lips brushed against the shell of his ear, murmuring, “You’re okay, Mav. I got you.”

In response, Maverick furrowed deeper into the warmth of Ice’s embrace, breathing him in. He listened to the rain and his own breathing, felt his heartbeats smoothing out again. It didn’t take as long for him to calm down after these nightmares anymore; he didn’t know how much of that was because of Ice, and how much of it was because he was actually trying to move on now, trying to dig up what he felt instead of just shoving it down further. Maybe, just maybe, he was getting better. Or maybe he was just in a better place, and the better would come with more time.

It didn’t really matter to him. All Maverick knew for sure was that he was going to keep waking up every morning, Ice by his side, and he was going to focus on the good memories with Goose instead of the bad. The first time they met, when Goose found him crying into a stack of cocktail napkins in the men’s bathroom after someone taunted him one time too many about his dad, and how Goose had sat down next to him on the dirty tiles and didn’t quit talking until he made Maverick smile. The first time they flew together, and the day Goose introduced him to Carole, and how he’d spent the best Christmas of his life with baby Bradley drooling all over the leather jacket that Goose bought Maverick. All the laughs they’d shared, the days together in the air, the memories they made. He’d remember the good, and he’d keep Goose with him the best he could, and he’d let himself hold onto any happiness he found on the way. And someday, maybe Maverick would wake up to find the guilt shaken loose from his heart for good, the knife-sharp pain faded into a dull ache, and he’d finally be able to let go.

Bit by bit, day by day, he’d get there. With Ice, he’d get there.

“Love you,” he whispered.

“Love you too.” The words were mumbled around a yawn, and Ice nudged Maverick’s nose clumsily with his own. “G’back to sleep.”

Maverick closed his eyes and dreamt on.


End file.
